Digital Signage Standard by POPAI

Currently digital signage implementations are mainly proprietary, and that means once you choose a vendor you are stuck with it, unless you completely change your network and the way you manage your content or handles separate systems.

If the digital signage industry really wants to take off some standards are needed. One of the first standard for digital signage has been released by POPAI (Point of Purchase Advertising International).

This first standard is to promote interoperability between different providers by defining Screen Media Formats (Click to open the standard) basically telling which video and audio codecs and containers (“Wrappers”)  and which and picture formats  should/could be supported by digital signage players and providing different levels of standard profiles and extended profiles a bit like it is done in MPEG-4 specifications.

POPAI also used to provide some media samples to test your system previously available at www.popai.com/DS/ContentSamples but the link is now dead. You may have to contact them to get the samples.

Finally you can request your products to be certified by POPAI and get this type of logo.

However, although many prominent software and hardware digital signage companies are involved (ENQII, Scala, Cisco, Broadsign, Wirespring, …), this standard does not seem to have gain much traction. Two other standards are in the work: Media Players Interoperability and Server Intercommunications.

To conclude here are some POPAI compliant digital signage players:

• Advantech  DSA-2130SA
• AIS SVS-2101 / SVS-2103. You may also purchase it on Amazon
• IADEA-XMP-300

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