Originally posted on 14 Apr 2014
Objective of Project:
The Republic of Cyprus decided to build a new airport in Cyprus, called the Larnaca International Airport, in order to respond to new security requirements and to welcome the new generation of aircraft conceived to maintain aging facilities and to operate with lower carbon footprints. In this context, the goal was to build a state of the art media showcase in order to give a pleasant experience to the potential 5 million passengers who travel through Larnaca Airport each year, and to use the renovation opportunity to build the most modern approaches for airport sales and advertising.
With the economic recession hitting the market hard at the time of the renovation, businesses were driven to find cheaper and more quantifiable ways to advertise. In this context, digital ads, allowing to advertise at one tenth of the cost of print, created a real market for digital signage systems. Also because of new security requirements, Larnaca airport had to rethink the passenger routing and handling, with an increase in the number of waiting areas where passengers’ attention can be attracted by digital signage messages. Furthermore, Larnaca’s new digital signage network installation presented technical challenges related to the nature of the installation and the short timelines which had to be met.
Project Outcome:
In order to reach the project’s goals, Minicom Digital Signage (MDS) and GnosySoft (GS) used their expertise in devising innovative digital signage solutions and project management competencies to conceive a configuration test in order to validate the quality of the broadcast according to required distances, and to allow for optimized content distribution. A mock-up was assembled at the airport’s facilities to test the integration of a single display in order to ensure the successful installation of over 350 displays.
MDS transmission units – DS Vision(R) 3000 – provided HD media distribution and display control in order to maintain the network’s high video quality when distributing via CAT 6 over long distances and controlling the displays remotely through RS232. This solution is using significantly less electricity and cabling, thereby dramatically reducing costs (which helped this installation to win the Viscom Best Practice Award in 2010).
Moreover, servers and players are located in secured, air-conditioned rack rooms spread across the airport, and the same channel is being played on numerous displays simultaneously. The solution chosen also included players provided by Scala, which ensures that the right piece of content is being displayed at the right time. The digital signage network has been running successfully for a year.
This solution for the Larnaca Airport’s digital signage network is a very good illustration of MDS & GS’s capacity to provide the most adapted solution with the best added value and low cost of operation for our clients.
Benefits that were provided with this new digital signage network were:
- Lower risk of display downtime.
- Increase processing speed with the interaction of high definition content in order to provide a pleasant experience for the traveler.
- Optimization of the number of places with digital signage content displayed for an increasing number of passengers, while keeping cost of operations consistently low.
Kramer Electronics:
David Haar
888-275-6311
