Here’s How Apple TV Has Quietly Become A Robust Digital Signage Solution

The world is an odd place. It is an unfair place, and that is both its beauty and its curse. Apple were hoping that their Apple TV would knock Roku Streaming, Google TV and Amazon Fire TV Stick off of their high perches, and yet Apple are faring the worst in the digital TV streaming wars. TV users are at an all-time low, and reviewers are stating the product is only good for Apple purists. Yet, Apple’s unit sales put them on par with at least Google, so what is happening? 

Are people buying Apple TV devices and not using them to stream TV shows? As odd and unfair as it seems, the surge in Apple TV product sales is driven almost exclusively by the digital signage industry. People are lapping up Apple TV devices by the hundreds because they are the most easily adaptable to digital sign use. In fewer than six years, we may see Apple’s products as the industry standard for digital signage.

The Apple TV Streaming Device is Very Powerful

At the Cisco Live 2013 conference, Mirror Show Management Inc and Cisco crafted a 19,950-square-foot booth split into three main sections. People entered under a huge 120-by-34-foot fabric canopy and were exposed to three 10-by-20-foot LED screens that ran 14 videos, along with 81 Christie MicroTiles that made up a 12-by-9-foot monolithic wall. The entire was run using 28 standing PC towers. These days, with Apple TV devices, the same could be achieved with eight units. Even if you consider the savings in space, heat and energy, this is a great achievement. But not only that, the Apple TV device is far more easily deployable than having PC towers dotted around the place.

Pioneers in New Directions

We are already seeing some impressive stuff with regards to Apple TV Digital Signage. For example, food courts all over the developed world are setting up massive displays that look like one big cinema screen, but they are actually made up of smaller digital signs that sit snugly together to create the illusion of one big screen. The cost of these multi-screen walls are thousands of percent cheaper than actually buying a single large TV screen. Yet, all of the smaller screens are run and coordinated with a single Apple TV streaming box. 

A single stream of content is pumped into the system from the Apple device, and each sign simply displays its portion of the content (like jigsaw pieces that show an entire image when they are all connected together). This is impressive enough on its own, but companies are already pioneering bigger and better things.

Shenzhen Keasy Technology CO has created digital sign windows. From the inside looking out, these windows are no different than your usual tinted windows seen on every office building. But, from the outside, they are digital signs showing content independently, or linked so that they display the same stream of information. Already, we have seen clever demonstrations where a Chinese dragon appears to be crawling around a building because it being showed crawling across each digital window one by one to create the illusion of movement. The cost of running these digital sign windows would be crippling for a smaller company, unless they use Apple TV units, which slash both the cost of installing the digital windows and the cost of running them.

Transparent LED Digital Sign Displays

On a similar note to the digital sign windows, the jewelry company Cartier hired SIS-digital and Guojialed (GLED) to create a sign for their store front in China. It displayed a ring that appeared to be three dimensional and appeared to be floating in the shop window. The first demonstration was a rather unpolished version of what will eventually become a regular feature in some of their stores. Nevertheless, that demonstration sparked copycat efforts from Jaguar and M&M world, both of which were shown to be using Apple TV devices to power their displays.

Apple TV is The “Go-To” Device for Digital Signs

The preliminary plans set out by the Conservative government in the United Kingdom showed that their placeholder digital sign tech choice was the Apple TV streaming device. The plans were set out for use by the Transport for London department. They are planning to modernize the London Tube to build on the infrastructure laid out during the 2012 London Olympics.

Though there are no guarantees that the London transport department won’t change its mind and find a different streaming unit, the fact they thought of Apple as their placeholder product is very telling. It suggests that the modern zeitgeist sees Apple TV devices as the Go-To brand for digital signs. Similar to how sellotape is the go-to for sticky tape, Volvo is the go-to for safe driving, and KitCast is the go-to for digital signage software. Apple has certainly become a robust digital signage solution, even despite the fact that Apple is losing the TV streaming wars to three other companies.

source https://duchonsigns.wordpress.com/2022/02/13/heres-how-apple-tv-has-quietly-become-a-robust-digital-signage-solution/