Sharp's Take on the Future of Digital Signage

Jonathan Blackwood (Editorial Director of Commerical Integrator/Host):

0:00
Hey, everyone.

0:01
Jonathan Blackwood here, Editorial Director of Commercial Integrator.

0:04
We are here for another three questions interview today with George Borden of Sharp NEC.

0:09
George, thank you so much for joining us today.

George Borden (Sharp NEC):

0:11
Jonathan, thank you.

0:12
It's a pleasure to be back again.

Blackwood:

0:14
Yeah, it's great to have you.

0:15
We're talking all about digital signage and video walls this this month and it's something that's top of mind for integrators with everything that's reopening and and starting up again.

0:25
So my first question to you is how can digital signage be used to capitalize on the customer experience and encourage customers to reenter these spaces that might have been closed or restricted capacity over the past year.

Borden:

0:38
It's an excellent question.

0:39
You know the the I think the big key take away word out of that question is experience.

0:44
And that's the one thing that we want to do in business is give everybody the opportunity to have a great experience coming back into our facility, whether that's a store, you know, whether it's a business environment because folks are going to have different decisions to make.

0:56
You know, you have the vaccination crowd that's, you know, immediately standing in line getting that, you know, wearing the masks, following the rules.

1:04
You have other folks that are apprehensive to that, you know and then you have you know, other walks of life in between.

1:10
So I think that you have to accommodate for every thought process that's out there from your potential customer and give them a pathway of confidence and comfort, you know, coming into your facility.

1:20
So if I'm, you know, really concerned about my safety and you know, I want to make sure that they're addressing that need for me and if I'm a little lackluster about it, no offense to those folks, but you know we need to accommodate for them because they're paying customers as well.

1:33
Signage can definitely help guide that process and instill those messages in a meaningful way that doesn't offend and actually creates that welcoming type of feel that we want to give to people so that once they leave our, our store and our our business, they can go tell everybody what a great experience they had.

1:49
And signage can definitely help that happen.

Blackwood:

1:52
For the last year, digital signage has been used in in new and really exciting ways.

1:57
Particularly what I'm thinking about is sensor occupancy and heat sensors to allow for testing of of at least potential signs of COVID and to allow to to bring large amounts of people through spaces and make sure that their temperatures are all set and make sure that there's not too many people occupying a space that has restricted capacity.

2:18
That has allowed for customers to really better understand all that digital signage can do.

2:23
It's not like digital signage wasn't capable of these things, it's just it wasn't utilized for these things.

2:28
So my question is what does the future of digital signage look like after this past year that has seen digital signage capabilities open up so much more?

Borden:

2:37
Yeah, that's that's another great question.

2:39
And I I like the sensor aspect of it.

2:41
Because you know the more additional data inputs that we can bring from a display and and contrast that with the message that's being disseminated can give us a lot more intelligence in which to further define that message, refine that message and maybe realize is this a good spot for this particular display or not.

2:59
So I I think that being malleable and flexible with placement of displays like there will still be a lot of usage of carts with displays because fixed environments may not be completely fixed moving forward.

3:11
So I hate to say this, but if something happens in the future where something re percolates and we have to go into a lockdown measure again businesses that you know as fix these things in a stationary way may they may regret that.

3:25
You know, we may still have the need to move things around or repurpose physical piece of pieces of real estate within our businesses if we have to adhere to social distancing and other things down the road.

3:35
So I think being prudent with, you know, the placement of signage is definitely a consideration. From a temperature taking standpoint,

3:43
I've seen that relax somewhat, you know, resorts are different.

3:46
You know, I've seen all inclusive resorts, you know take your temperature, you know upon entry and you know that may relax as well.

3:53
But definitely echoing your your statement about sensors within displays, that's coming down the road in a big way.

4:00
I can't tell you which product we have coming down the road because it hasn't launched yet, but this particular product is going to have several different sensors in it and then we'll be able to wrap that up in a monitoring package for the customer.

4:12
So definitely it's coming.

4:13
You know, they want to see these data points brought in.

4:15
They want to understand, you know, is this the best place for our display and ultimately are we giving the right message, you know, to the folks coming into the business?

Blackwood:

4:24
Well, I look forward to hearing about that new product.

4:27
I know NEC is always putting up out really innovative digital signage solutions, but I do want to ask you about a current recent product, the message series large format displays.

4:37
Can you tell us a little bit more about these?

Borden:

4:38
Yeah, the message series, fantastic series of products that we have out.

4:43
And more specifically it's the ME, the M and the MA series displays and those actually go in in a progression of you know feature set AB and C and they increase in scale from there.

4:55
So like the ME series reading a little bit of this verbatim, we have a 43, a 50, 55 inch, 65 inch model and it's a 400 NIT display with a variety of different inputs and sensors and things like that is a temperature sensor built into it, CEC control for your consumer electronics.

5:14
You can position the display landscape or portrait as you would expect with a standalone digital signage display.

5:20
The M series moving up the line it boasts 500 NIT so you get 100 NIT to the to the plus a couple different size options.

5:28
In that model we have 43, 49, 55 and 65.

5:32
It's 24/7 runtime display, high haze panel and then it also has a neat joystick designed for control in the back.

5:39
A lot of folks out there will know us for our buttons and the button controls that we have behind the displays and we're improving upon that with certain models moving into the future.

5:48
And the M is definitely that.

5:49
And then lastly, the top of the line in the message series is the MA series.

5:54
And the MA series, you know boasts a variety of different features including our our famous Spectra view color engine that can actually guarantee color accuracy.

6:03
It also has multi stream transport capabilities.

6:06
So if there's a digital signage player that can do multi stream output, you can daisy chain up to four of these displays together and have an independent video signal on each display.

6:16
So it's actually a game changer in the quick service retail environment where they don't necessarily have to have a media player associated to each display and it also has 700 NIT capability and a bunch of other great things.

6:28
And then lastly, any of our displays or projectors from NEC can be managed from the comfort of your desktop with a free download software we have called Naviset Administrator 2.

6:38
So you simply plug in your NEC display or projector into the network connection,

6:42
and Naviset Administrator 2 will pull the network and find that asset.

6:46
And then you can control every bit of the menu functionality from the comfort of your desktop, even including schedules of time and time off.

6:54
So you can schedule your digital signage network to turn on at a certain time during a day.

6:58
You can have a turn off at a certain time during the day, and then you can even monitor the temperature sensors and the internals of the product.

7:05
So ME, M and MA series are what we're referring to with the message series and a lot of interest so far.

7:10
It's really taking off in a big way.

7:12
So thank you for asking about that.

Blackwood:

7:14
Yeah, absolutely.

7:15
And I know that remote capability is something that integrators and their customers are going to be really excited about even as companies move to potentially more of a hybrid model.

7:24
If any of the integrators in our audience wants to learn more about Sharp NEC, how can they find out more about you guys?

Borden:
7:30
You can reach out to me directly if you feel inclined to do that.

7:32
My e-mail address is gborden@sharpnec-displays.com or you can go to our URL www.sharpnecdisplays.com.

Blackwood:

7:48
Great.

7:49
Well, George Borden of Sharp NEC, thank you so much for joining us and letting us know about these products and about the digital signage market as a whole.

Borden:

7:57
My pleasure, Jonathan.

7:57
Thanks for having me on again.