Your digital signage player is the “brain” of your digital signage system. To create a successful digital signage system, you need the “best brain”  – you need to choose the best digital signage player for your needs.
Digital signage can become expensive. There are many digital signage player choices, and choosing the best one for your needs is critical, not only for your budget but to ensure you have the functionality you need.
Here are some features and factors to look for in a digital signage player:
- Compatibility
- Scheduling
- Internet connectivity
- Local distribution
- Reporting
- Dynamic data
- Credibility and support
Best Digital Signage Player Compatibility
Many digital signage companies put together systems with proprietary (custom, in-house developed) software. This creates issues like:
- High risk of “buggy” software
- Being restricted to their digital signage player hardware and software
- New software to learn that may not match common software approaches
- Being dependent on the company to come up with updates
We believe the best digital signage player is one that works with your existing computer systems. Our digital signage player is Windows-based and can run on ANY current Windows based computer or compute stick.
This gives you much more choice in your digital signage player hardware as you can:
- Repurpose old computers as digital signage players
- Use any new Windows computer as a player
- Use less expensive palm sized computers called “compute sticks” as players
Our player is used by thousands of companies and we are continually updating it to ensure it is a bug-free as possible.
Digital Signage Player Scheduling
When looking for your own best digital signage player, make sure that if offers scheduling.
Being able to schedule different ads, signs and play lists offers these advantages
- Restaurant’s digital menu boards can automatically change from breakfast to lunch menu
- In a shopping mall environment, advertising can change to:
- show different products on Seniors day
- show young, hip products when youngsters hit the mall after school
- automatically switch from Halloween ads to Christmas ads on November 1, then to Boxing Day ads on Dec 26.
- In a conference center or event environment, events that are complete can automatically drop off the event list to ensure only the upcoming events are showing
Digital Signage Player Formats
When considering your digital signage player, look for a player that can handle a wide range of formats. Our digital player can handle formats like these:
- Images
- JPEG
- GIF
- PNG
- BMP
- Video
- MP4
- AVI
- DivX
- Streaming video
- Audio and music
- MP3
- PowerPoint
Many other formats can be accommodated as well.
Internet Connectivity
Connecting your player to the internet provides a host of benefits, including:
- The ability to update your playlists and signage from anywhere
- Streaming video
- Showing the latest news, weather and sports information
This is a very useful feature to have and a must-have feature if you are managing digital signage in multiple geographic locations.
Local Distribution
If your player is getting content from the Internet, what happens if the connection is lost? Our digital player caches your playlist content it receives from the Internet so that it can continue to play the local ads, videos and signs in the event of an Internet outage in your area.
Reporting
Good digital signage software provides management with reports so that you can see at a glance how your system is doing. IPoint offers:
- Real time monitoring so you know what is shown on each monitor
- Up time monitoring so you know immediately if your system is down
- Tracking of ad views so you can ensure client ads are shown the correct number of times
Digital Signage Dynamic Data Capability
Using our dynamic PowerPoint data add on, the screens shown on the digital signage player can pull information from data sources like:
RSS feeds- Excel spreadsheets
- SQL databases
- CSV files
- XML files and more
This lets you create automatically updating content that you can “set and forget” like sports scores, weather, or news as well updates from a central location like the head office of a restaurant franchise changing thousands of restaurant’s menu boards from one central location.
Best Digital Signage Player Credibility
When committing to your player, you want to ensure that the company providing the support and player will be around when you need them.
The best digital signage player is one that is proven to be a leader because it is used by prominent companies. Ours is used by:
- NASA
- Coca-Cola
- The US Army
- eBay
- Nestle
- Phillips
- US Air Force
- Hewlett Packard
- Bayer
- Siemens
- IBM
- Boeing
- Airbus
- Sotheby’s Auction
- KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
- And over 5000 others
For support, we offer a support ticket feature, live chat with support people, product manuals, knowledge base and tutorial videos.
Try Before You Buy
We are so sure that iPoint is the best digital signage player for you, that we are willing to let you “try before you buy” with a 15-day free trial. During the trial, you will have full access to all the features and our support team.
You can access your free trial here. Questions about your planned use of digital signage and the software? Please contact us and we would be happy to help.
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