PCC

Airports have been one of the early adopters in the Digital signage industry and offer excellent case studies in the opportunities, problems, and solutions applicable to these locales.

This challenge was presented during discussions at the Syracuse airport on way to deliver a one minute video to the viewing public. raymond Brog, facilities director for Syracuse International Airport, met with members from the Central New York based Presentation Concepts Corporation to discuss options in presenting the short animated video.

The video, produced by the Department of Homeland Security, illustrated to passengers what they can and cannot take aboard an aircraft as well as presenting additonal information related to security.

Borg and PCC considered several plans that would accommodate the Transportation Security

Administration’s (TSA) recommendation of displaying the video in different languages to be played to passengers as they approached the first checkpoint.

Everything from a simple DVD player to a sophisticated digital signage system was looked at. After deciding on using a digital signage system, three main issues needed to be addressed.

The first concern was the actual location of the display, since there would be an abundance of ambient light present as a result of direct sunshine into the terminal.

The second issue was the desire to show more than just a constantly looping one minute movie. 

And the third and biggest issue was cabling — since the airport has two first checkpoints, each at the entrance to a terminal wing of arrival and departure gates, two signs would be needed at opposite ends of the airport main building.

In addressing these three issues, PCC entered into the recurring debate of Plasma versus LCD. PCC chose a Mitsubishi MLM 400 40" LCD screen to address the sunlight problem because of the screen’s superior brightness and antiglare characteristics. Another benefit of the Mitsubishi LCD screen was the longer term lower cost of ownership since it has a replaceable backlight feature. 

A better variety of content and the ability to manage the signs from a distance proved easily solved. The new Exhibio Digital Signage server offered an all-in-one solution. With an innovating HTML oriented system that can show flash, jpegs, and mpegs, it transcends the traditional Digital Signage players or appliances. It can show these images in different zones or panes on the screen. Furthermore, the manager can use scrolling test and live video.

These features appealed to Ray Borg. “I like the fact that all I need to do is open up a web browser and I have control of my screens without having to install any software,” Borg said.

The final decision in designing the system involved the distance dilemma. The signs were in different concourses over 1,000 feet from the server room. Additionally, the space where the screens were to be mounted was limited, leading Ray Borg to prefer to locate the “player” in the server room rather than installed on or near the displays.

PCC Project Manager, Doug Kellar, thought it was a “plain choice” to use the existing fiber network in place to

resolve the distance problem. “Twisted pair (cat5) runs good up to about 600 feet without any degradation

in signal,” Kellar said. “All we need is one strand of the fiber and we can go the distance,” Kellar added.

Using two Communication Specialties Fiber transmitters and receivers, the run was made and the signal was clear, resulting in a successful Digital Signage system application.

This case study of implementing a digital signage system presents a good model in resolving distance and cabling issues for large facilities, since fiber networks are already in place. Most of the fiber networks are multi-strand and the digital signage system needs only one strand.