How was ISE 2016 - Europe’s biggest digital signage exhibition

Last week I was at ISE 2016, the Europe’s best attended AV and digital signage exhibition in Amsterdam. The show has become so popular that the event was extended to 4 days for the first time in its history. The first thing I noticed was Hall 8 (focused on Digital Signage) was busier than I had ever seen it. There was a real buzz going on and the quality of stand designs and demos’ was very impressive. It was nice to see some new companies attending for the first time.

Curved Displays

Did you notice a trend for curved displays? There were some amazing - and actually quite practical - designs on show. Everyone was filming the LG OLED curved wall, but 3M also had a really good curved multi-touch display which was very usable and ideal for the pinball game that was being demonstrated.

LED displays

There was, as usual, a huge variety of LED displays on show, although I struggle to really work out the differences without having an in-depth conversation with each company. What was clear was the technology is really maturing and the cost and sizes available are making LED installs much more mainstream rather than just using them in flagship stores.

Digital Signage Innovation

I was very impressed with the Digital Signage solution on display from Gimasi who were showing off some really exciting new products including the use of one of our Fitlet i mini PCs for content playback and their CMS solution, Dilitio, is one of the nicest I have seen for a long time.

Powered by dual core AMD A4 Micro-6400T SoC, Fitlet i is a ruggedised and fanless small factor PC that we recommend for digital signage as it comes with smooth graphics capacity (AMD Radeon R3 Graphics) and a low-power consumption, especially significant for 24/7 applications.

Quividi also had, as usual, some great demos running their solutions and Poster Digital also impressed me with their offering using a really smart interface. Philips were showcasing their upcoming Android screens which were impressive and running not only great content but with some neat reporting and diagnostic capabilities from the in-Store Media Signage Software.

LG also had a good range of digital signage screens using their Web OS showcasing perfectly the momentum to use Displays embedded with a System on Chip for Digital Signage.

4k Media Players

4K, Interactive and Android products were evident throughout Hall 8. It seems the momentum is now evidently moving towards this technology as the standard requirement than just novelties. Of course, it’s one thing to say that they are true 4K player but I highly recommend you test your content before purchasing a media player as we’ve done on the MINIX x88-i to make sure your content is smoothly played at the right frame per second. Getting the content encoded “just right” is still a little bit of a black art at times.