Digital Signage: Why Use a Set-Top Box?
A set-top box appliance offers many advantages over using a PC for digital signage
Most digital signage software solutions require the use of a PC. Sometimes, this can be an existing PC that a customer may already have. More often, a customer is required to purchase a new and costly PC which is necessary to run a company's digital signage software. Cilutions set-top box media players offer the perfect alternative to costly PC-based digital signage solutions. Cilutions offers two media players for you to choose from. Both come equiped with software to remotely deliver media files to the box, display them in a digital signage or video-on-demand application, and manage from a remote location.
Set-top boxes offer the following advantages over PC's:
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An "out-of-the-box" solution (plug and play) | |
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One size fits all - There's no need to worry about all the OS versions and separate licensing | |
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Reliability - there are no moving parts on flash-based STBs; the shelf life of a set-top box far exceeds that of a standard PC | |
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Security - set-top boxes are much less "hack-able" than a PC-based product | |
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Easier to maintain - there's no need to worry about operating system patches, etc. | |
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Price - a set-top box is always less expensive than a comparable PC | |
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Easier to manage - each Cilutions Media Player comes with SNMP Management software |
Cilutions Media Players vs. The Competition
The following table lists the features of Cilutions DMB Media Players alongside those of the leading competition:
| Product | A140 Media Player | A540 Media Player | The Competition | |
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| Price (combined hardware and software) | $299 | $434 | $599 | |
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| Media Formats | ||||
| Videos | ||||
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Standard Definition | |
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High Definition | |
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MPEG-2 | |
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MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 | |
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| Images | ||||
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High Definition | |
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BPM | |
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JPEG | |
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PNG | |
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GIF | |
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TIFF | |
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| Audio | ||||
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MP3 | |
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HDMI 1.3a | |
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1080p | |
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1080i | |
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720p | |
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480i | |
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| Native Connectors | ||||
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HDMI 1.2a | |
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Composite | |
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Component | |
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VGA | |
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S-Video | |
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Ethernet 10/100 | |
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USB | |
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Status LEDs | |
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| Feature | A140 Media Player | A540 Media Player | The Competition | |
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| Interactivity Support for remote control, font panel and touch screen interaction |
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| Looping Playlist Support Multiple images or videos in a list |
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| Zones Multiple content windows displayed on a single screen |
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| Video and Image Playlists Permits combining videos and images in a playlist for rendering in the same screen zone |
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| Usage Tracking Statistics Logs recording player performance |
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| Playback Scheduling and Day-Parting Control screen layouts and playlist by time of day |
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| Menu Boards Multiple text tables (e.g., price list spreadsheets) on a screen where each spreadsheet can be separately updated |
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| Video-On-Demand Interactive catalog of videos which can be selected for local playback (supports both touchscreen and remote control operational modes) |
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| Way-Finding Interactive catalog of maps (i.e., images for display) selectable by remote control or touch screen interaction |
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| Weather Records The ability to show multiple days, temperatures and informative images to render weather conditions |
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| RSS Ticker Feed Scrolling news feeds from an external source |
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| Transparent Image Over Video An image can be used to overlay some or all of a video zone thereby providing unique "branding" for an organization |
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| Transparent Text Over Video RSS or text crawler over video with a configured background transparency level |
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| Live Video Option The ability to include live video as an alternative or in addition to video files stored locally |
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| Multicast Streamer The ability to multicast stream a video file to downstream devices on the network |
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| Paging Overlay The ability to receive an "announcement" screen zone useful for paging applications. |
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| Real-Time API The ability to receive a screen update in real-time offering a programmatic command/response API to supplant or augment the file-based model for screen operations |
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| Screen Creation | ||||
| Application for Graphically Building Screens Let's a network administrator or user build screens and publish to individual players or groups of players |
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| Permits Screen Preview During Creation The ability to preview screens on the same platform where they are built |
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| Content Update | ||||
| Non-Networked Screen Update The ability to update content manually via the USB port |
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| Secure Network Pull Periodically pulls files from an external server |
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| Multicast File Reception Highly efficient distribution model on networks supporting IP Multicast |
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| File Push Embedded FTP server offering remote file updates on demand |
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| Management | ||||
| SNMP Agent With published MIB for use by an external SNMP Manager |
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| Web User Interface Configure appliance and retrieve playback logs using a common web browser |
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| Remote Login Useful for engineering support and remote analysis |
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| Remote Upgrade Remotely upgrade media player software |
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Downloads |
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A140 Media Player Data Sheet |
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A140 Media Player Spec Sheet |
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A540 Media Player Release Notes |
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A540 Media Player Spec Sheet |
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A140 & A540 Comparison Guide |
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Questions? Click here to submit a question about the DMB Media Player. |
