Tizen Smart Displays Now “More Than Capable” Of Doing Most Digital Signage Work: Lab Tests

December 6, 2022 by Dave Haynes

Independent testing done by the software firm signageOS suggests Samsung’s current line-up of “smart” LCD pro displays are “more than capable” of meeting the playback quality demands of typical digital signage deployments, getting a 91/100 rating in the US-Czech company’s new report.

The goal of this report, says signageOS,  was to analyze the performance of Samsung Tizen 6.5, comparing it to other devices, such as external media players and other System-on-Chip displays, as well as previous versions of the operating system, including Tizen 4.0. This was conducted through the use of 58 typical digital signage Test Scenarios mimicking current digital signage requirements, which were divided into 14 Test Groups based on the specific properties being analyzed.

Tizen 6.5 successfully passed 53 of the 58 Test Scenarios, giving it an overall rating of 91% indicating Tizen 6.5 is more than capable of handling typical digital signage scenarios similar to that of mainstream media players. Its performance is on par with industry standards and shows constant and continuous improvement over the previously tested version 4.0 however, does not show large-scale generational leaps.

Despite the great results, evident improvements should be made in the area of HTML5 video playback support. The main shortcoming of Tizen 6.5 is the missing capability to playout video-over-video scenarios. Since Tizen 4.0 no improvement were made at all for the video-over-video playback. The capability of Tizen 6.5 to play complicated HTML video-over-video is lacking and doesn’t make it a suitable solution for more complex digital signage experience. Resolving the video-over-video scenarios would increase the score to 97% and open up many new applications.

Individual implementations of Tizen and experience with the platform can score differently depending on the particular method used. For a specific use case, a comprehensive examination of the CMS provider’s Tizen implementation is highly recommended and required to ensure the full capabilities of the operating system are being utilized. The overall findings support that Samsung Tizen 6.5 is capable of serving the majority of mainstream digital signage use cases. It has surpassed previous versions of SSSP and continues to be a practical alternative to any external media player in the mainstream digital signage market.

That’s all interesting because it counters a perception still out there in the industry that the “smart” displays – started by Sony, mainstreamed by Samsung and adopted by just about everyone, save NEC – were sleek, but don’t have the horsepower to deliver more than simple applications like digital posters and menu boards. In the early days, that was very much true. But smart displays have been around now for a decade, and like just about everything, they got better and more capable.

I have been hearing more and more that smart displays have closed performance gaps, and have the benefits of being deployed quickly and tidily, and having fewer field outage issues – in both cases because there’s only a power cord, and no signal cables or other devices.

The industry seems to break down like this these days:

signageOS says its Research Center’s goal is “to not only act as an essential resource for digital signage hardware analysis, but to drive innovation through cooperation with hardware manufacturers and other members of the digital signage industry.

The company has a direct interest in how smart displays work and behave, as its main products are software that creates a handshake between different “smart” devices like pro screens, and CMS systems that don’t natively support those operating systems, like Tizen and LG’s webOS. signageOS is also getting increasingly into device management.

  1. Robert Heise says:

    Also to consider is the CMS licensing requirements. For a multi-display wall or installation, it can be less expensive to use a multi-output player with one license than four SOC players with four licenses.

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