You need reliable software/firmware for digital signage displays
One statistic you probably won’t find in any of the literature for the various digital signage systems available on the market today is a reliability metric. All of us have seen displays like this one where the computer powering the digital sign has crashed or failed to start up.
There are several ways to deal with the inherent unreliability of computer software:-
1. Use a simpler solution. If you are running Windows or Linux behind your digital signage display you will eventually have to deal with updates, device drivers, configuration changes and other issues that affect overall reliability, up-time and maintenance costs. If you use a fixed-function digital signage player these issues are less likely.
2. Use a solid-state device with no moving parts: Disk drives are inherently unreliable over long periods of time, SSD’s with no moving parts or flash-memory-based players are likely to be more reliable in the long-run.
3. Keep it simple: If your digital signage display combines live video streams, RSS feeds, scheduled playback of content and more it’s going to be inherently less reliable than a simpler system. It’s a simple mathematical fact that 99.9% reliability applied across, say, 4 subsystems, will give you only 99.6% overall reliability (and often less when the communication failures between these subsystems is taken into account). 99.6% may sound just fine to you as a reliability number but that’s over a day every year when your digital sign is not working! Let’s hope it’s a quiet day for your business and that you notice it in time!
Digital Signage Reliability Metrics
You need reliable software/firmware for digital signage displays
One statistic you probably won’t find in any of the literature for the various digital signage systems available on the market today is a reliability metric. All of us have seen displays like this one where the computer powering the digital sign has crashed or failed to start up.
There are several ways to deal with the inherent unreliability of computer software:-
1. Use a simpler solution. If you are running Windows or Linux behind your digital signage display you will eventually have to deal with updates, device drivers, configuration changes and other issues that affect overall reliability, up-time and maintenance costs. If you use a fixed-function digital signage player these issues are less likely.
2. Use a solid-state device with no moving parts: Disk drives are inherently unreliable over long periods of time, SSD’s with no moving parts or flash-memory-based players are likely to be more reliable in the long-run.
3. Keep it simple: If your digital signage display combines live video streams, RSS feeds, scheduled playback of content and more it’s going to be inherently less reliable than a simpler system. It’s a simple mathematical fact that 99.9% reliability applied across, say, 4 subsystems, will give you only 99.6% overall reliability (and often less when the communication failures between these subsystems is taken into account). 99.6% may sound just fine to you as a reliability number but that’s over a day every year when your digital sign is not working! Let’s hope it’s a quiet day for your business and that you notice it in time!