With OOH (Out Of Home) media, it is the nature of the beast that the LCDs or plasma displays are usually placed somewhere on high, easy to see and therefore out of reach, or locked/hidden away somewhere awkward to access. Manual operation of the player just isn’t a practical option. Logistically, as soon as the ladders come out in a high footfall area like a mall or station, Health and Safety regulations make directly accessing a display and its controller a timely and disruptive exercise. This is why leading digital signage software packages include the functionality for remote system management . But what do you do if an unplanned power cut crashes a local signage installation?
The standard industry answer to this is Auto Power support – a BIOS based facility which can instruct the unit to either power back up, stay off or pick up where it left off in the event of a power outage. This offers a useful level of protection but certain circumstances outmanoeuvre this failsafe. For example, if the power interruption is intermittent with power re-failing within a few seconds of power up, the normal auto on function may not respond. Also if for some reason you need to remotely power down a system, the auto on function will not kick in requiring a manual restart. For some customers this presents a problem.
Blue Chip Technology’s response has been to develop a unique Always On module as an option across the Vario range. Designed and manufactured by Blue Chip Technology, Always On offers the next level of protection against content downtime. Blue Chip have a twenty year heritage in dealing with customers running mission critical applications, once again we have been able to leverage this experience in our digital signage hardware. Once a Vario player is fitted with Always On you will have to literally pull the plug to stop the unit powering up again.