(click image for larger view)

HP Signage Player

Hewlett-Packard announced two digital signage products on Monday that are designed for deployments of between one and 10 displays and target SMBs.

"The HP SignagePlayer mp8000s and HP SignagePlayer mp8000r are designed for independent retailers, and other small to midsize businesses that want to deploy full-featured digital signage at a single location or across a small network, " said Bob Rosenberry, manager of Visual Solutions, Retail Store Solutions at HP. "We're providing an easy way to buy, install and run digital signage for a company that isn't prepared or able to involve themselves in a larger deployment project. This will allow wider adoption of digital signage, especially among smaller businesses."

Digital signage refers to computer displays in lobbies and other areas visible to employees, visitors or the public, with text and multimedia content that can be easily changed and updated. Popular venues include airports, movie theaters, department stores, conference centers, hotels, hotel and corporate lobbies, and hallways. As prices for digital signage products drop, more companies are adopting them for information, advertising and sales. Digital signage often runs non-stop, 24/7 and 365 days a year. The content to be displayed may be stored locally, such as on a Compact Flash card or a USB drive, or provided through a wired or wireless network connection.

The two new players are part of HP's digital signage product family. Both are running Windows Embedded Standard 2009 and use an Intel Core 2 Duo 8400 processor.

The HP digital signage players each creates a single "channel" of digital signage output, according to Rosenberry. "You can connect multiple displays via daisy-chaining to a single player, and these displays can be showing identical content, or be "tiled" portions of a display 'wall.' "