Free Xibo Digital Signage CMS Adds Commercial LG webOS Player

December 12, 2017 by Dave Haynes

The open source digital signage CMS Xibo now has a software player that will work happily with LG’s webOS smart displays, but it’s not free like the mothership CMS.

The new webOS player has a one-time fee of 120 GBP, or about $160 USD. If you equated that to a SaaS fee over three years, that would be  less than $5/month.

The native software player (meaning there was more software development involved than with a generic browser player) was built in partnership with Intelligent Media, an LG webOS for Signage platform solution partner. The idea, says Brighton, UK-based Xibo, was to give customers the same Xibo solution on commercial LG webOS SoC displays without the need to purchase an external media player.

Says a press release:

Xibo for webOS is fully compatible with the open source Xibo CMS and can run against a ‘self-hosted’ on-premise CMS as well as Xibo in the Cloud. Local secure media storage means that content will be on the Player in advance and played back even if the monitor were to lose connection with the CMS.

The Player is compatible with specific LG webOS SoC displays to give customers the benefit of a simplified installation whilst lowering the total cost of ownership. A system on chip monitor specifically intended for digital signage saves space, reduces energy consumption, minimizes points of failure and reduces maintenance costs.

As with the popular Xibo for Android Player, Xibo for webOS does attract a one-off licence fee for each monitor that a customer wishes to deploy.

“We have developed this Player in conjunction with Intelligent Media, in response to customer feedback to offer the same Xibo digital signage solution on commercial monitors with an attractive licence fee. The success of our company, Spring Signage, enables us to remain committed to improving the open source Xibo CMS and Player for Windows, as well as actively developing our new Player for Linux,” says Dan Garner, Founder of Spring Signage

Xibo says it has more than 9,000 customers in 138 countries. The first attraction, of course, is the price. Searches on free digital signage software are very big on this blog.

Having an Android player means, in theory, the Xibo system could also work on the system on chip smart displays made by Philips and Sharp. Samsung has its own operating system, Tizen, that it uses for its smart signage platform.