Posted on: February 16, 2021
By: Dina Townsend
The digital signage marketplace is a crowded one and seems to become more fragmented by the day. As the market pivots with the pandemic, the landscape is becoming even more confusing. In today’s blog, we will look at how YCD and our Cnario platform differentiates ourselves in this landscape, explore what sets us apart, and answer the question of why you should care.
The Cnario content management platform is a software-based toolkit. It enables the experience. In an overly simplified model, Marketing teams define the goals, Creative Agencies design the assets that support those goals, and content management platforms deliver those assets to the audience to achieve those goals. But, alas, the devil is in the details as they say; and there are many components in that mix that make all stages possible. Let’s explore the latter part of that process between the creative and the end result.
Most providers in the digital signage market can deliver on the above end result – get the content to the screen. Sounds simple. But the quality and efficiency of that playback massively impacts the value of that end result. In many cases a number of external components work together to achieve what looks like seamless playback. These components may include several media players, video controllers, and switches. Each of these components are external to the content management software and come at a cost. And like everything else, they need maintenance to continue to function in their intended role for the life of a deployment.
Back in the day when I was learning to fly airplanes…a pursuit I never finished due to family obligations…I told my CFI that I wanted to fly helicopters too. He quickly cut me off and said “No you don’t! Too many moving parts.”. I’m no aviation expert, but the concept of too many moving parts, all of which could cause a major issue to my end result if they failed independently, resonated with me then, and it resonates for me now. This same concept applies to a digital signage deployment.
In many deployments, the YCD Cnario platform performs the jobs inside of our software that would otherwise be performed by the external hardware thereby reducing the costs, maintenance, and complexities associated with those other moving parts. By doing so it creates a much more efficient system with a lower total cost of ownership. Furthermore, the quality of playback is not only not sacrificed it is dramatically enhanced.
Cnario provides pixel perfect playback, full player synchronization, and support for Any K resolution. It does all this inside of the software platform thereby ensuring that the playback of the assets created to execute on marketing goals is exceptional and as intended. This gives the very best possible opportunity of achieving the anticipated result.
Connect with us here to talk through your project and how our software vs hardware based methodology can impact your results.
