Samsung’s 2nd Gen Smart Sign Out In May

March 31, 2014 by Dave Haynes

samsungSmartLogo (1)

I am in a very chilly and white Calgary, Alberta, and heading to what may well be an even chillier and just as snowy Edmonton, on a quick Western Canada swing.

The Calgary part of the trip was a presentation by me to a room full of regional Samsung integrators and partners, talking about where the signage space appears to be heading and how it’s going through some big-time disruption.

Before  I did my thing, Marco Nalli from Samsung walked through where the Smart Signage program is at and where it is going. The 1st generation of the product has been on the market for about 15 months, and the 2nd gen version will be out in a few weeks.

V2 will have an ARM A9 processor like the existing one, but will have a few critical differences:

1- quad core processor

2 – built-in wifi

3 – SD Flash memory card slot for more storage

4 – file delivery using compressed files, so screens going offline is no biggie … the player will run off the local file store

5 – management by mouse and keyboard, instead of remote control (think how much fun it is to set up a streaming TV box with a remote, and then consider a lot more things to add in)

There will be a 22 inch display with the system on chip in it, addressing that middle ground for either a very big tablet or a small smart panel.

Also intriguing, though I didn’t totally get my head around it, is that as many as 255 Smart Signage panels can be daisy-chained together via USB to make video walls that don’t need an external video wall processor or similar device. They all talk to each other.

Capital Networks and a company called IAVI, which is reselling the Swedish CMS SmartSign, did demos at the event. Another one goes in Montreal in mid-April, when I will dazzle the crowd with my ability to order beer, say thank you, and swear, in French.

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