No matter how good the graphics are,” says Omnivex President Jeff Collard, “if what’s on screen is not specific to the person watching, it’s dead!” Simplistic but right on the mark that. And around it Omnivex has built its portfolio in screen media networks, with its latest version, Moxie, which you can see in action at London’s Screen Expo. Trading as a private company, Canadian based Omnivex emerged in 1991 with a background in finance and trading floors where vast amounts of data were constantly changing and had to be efficiently handled. At that time, says Jeff Collard, the industry wanted more visuals introduced into displays for the obvious reason of making them look more interesting. Building on that, it joined forces with the likes of NEC and Fujitsu using their plasmas to add presentation graphics to systems capabilities.At that time, adds Jeff Collard, other presentation companies found difficulties adding data systems to essentially graphics engines. But for Omnivex and its data engine, adding graphics was not a problem. And for retail, that meant adding technological capabilities to screen networks from a trading perspective. “Now,” says Jeff Collard, “digital signage is visually based on real time information and Omnivex’s strengths have taken it into company communication, banking and more.” Screen media networks have evolved in parallel in disparate markets and in retail, until now. The call, he adds, has been for the softer things in communication with more push on brand recognition for example. Now, harder facts and requirements are creeping into the equation such as measuring performance and feedback. “Omnivex has exactly that at its fingertips,” he enthuses. In the march of things, timing just has to be right and for Omnivex, retail was never a main arena until now, with retailers now driving stronger than ever the requirement for data. Airports are just one example.

So with data performance and the fixation on context, Omnivex developed its fourth generation digital signage system solution Moxie.

Moxie, says Jeff Collard, has been developed as a data driven model from day one, taking advantage of the opportunity to review what it had developed so far and regenerate from the ground up. The company talked to stores, airports, banks and others from its legion of customers and drew up a screen media network wish list and integrated it into Moxie. As a Microsoft partner, the company also looked at where technology per se was heading: what was moving forward and what needed to be taken advantage of, for example, RFID concepts and mobile technologies such as those currently emerging in Japan.

So with a clean sheet of paper, Omnivex mapped out the future of its product, culminating in the very first public viewing of Moxie on Stand C43 at Screen Expo. Moxie, says Jeff Collard, is a superior way to run a network, integrating for graphics, the benefits of Windows Presentation Foundation, WPF, a key Microsoft technology delivering full 3D images not just layered graphics. “The way WPF works,” he says, “is that real time data can be tied to any element of graphics, with price changes, for example, taking effect immediately without human intervention.” Indeed, he adds, any parameter on anything on screen can be impacted by real time information.

Moxie provides an interactive system, not just to touch, but to everything that happens in a facility, says Jeff Collard, including back office, stock, shopper interaction and all. “Moxie is the future of digital signage,” he says, “with each store location, for example, able to take the optimum on anything to be done, running it immediately and uniquely. If, it rains,” he adds, “you can immediately run a promotion on umbrellas based on local inventory, pricing, store traffic and selected messages from the store manager. Putting intelligence into the system makes for an efficient screen network to drive the business forward.”

Omnivex sees the sales lift argument as secondary to greater efficiency in driving costs out of a business. And so Moxie was developed in four main areas, with context as a driver for content.

It considers who is standing in front of a display and what message is right for specific, as well as inventory levels and whether promotions for out of stock items should stop. Omnivex bases these decisions on a strong data foundation that allows advertising messages and content to be controlled by live business data.

Omnivex says it has always been the leader in connecting real time data to digital display networks, hence its rally cry of context is king. In order to make digital signage effective it says such signage must be relevant to the viewer. In Moxie, live data allows each display to target messages to individual viewers based on who they are, where they are, what they are doing, and what the location can, or indeed wants to, offer.

For Moxie, Omnivex has contrived to ensure everything is data, thus making any attribute dynamic, extensible and described. The result is that a message can be capable of tailoring itself to an individual or conditions. For example, if the viewer is male and it is a hot day, the system might select a different set of options than for a woman on a cold winter’s day.

Many systems have talked about this capability, maintains Jeff Collard, but are limited to specific responses and simple playlist manipulation. With Moxie, any aspect of the content or number of attributes can change, he says, based on the situation, adding, “Since the information is pushed and not polled, everything happens in real time”.

Moxie boasts a superior graphics capability. Omnivex has introduced the content management system with true 3D graphics similar to that of high end video games. Moreover, as a growing portion of today’s population is exposed to high end graphics from computer games and with the pending move to HDTV, deigned to complete its conversion by Feb 17, 2009, Omnivex says people’s expectation of video content will rise dramatically.

Looking at digital signage today, Omnivex takes the overall view that it is pretty flat, and the graphics are limited. “Moxie will change all that,” says Jeff Collard. “Moxie uses the same DirectX graphics engine that powers MS Vista and video games. This gives Moxie users the ability to create much richer and compelling content. It also means that graphics can be fully scalable and one design will, therefore, scale to fit many different screen resolutions. That eliminates a major cost in creating graphics in different resolutions to optimise appearance on different screens.”

Graphic designers often create sophisticated animations using multiple layers that must then be flattened and rendered into a single file. Making changes to any aspect of one of these animations, you have to open the file, make the changes to the layered version, re-render it and then redistribute it. Moxie renders all content in real time and features the ability to bind any aspect of any graphical element to dynamic data. So changes happen on-the-fly at the media player location automatically, without designer involvement. “And this,” says Jeff Collard, “saves hours or days of work, eliminates redistribution costs, and provides instant updates to increase the value of the message.”

Within the Moxie software, the Moxie Studio Shell provides a new user interface that is said to combine the convenience and ubiquity of a web browser with the power and speed of a dedicated client application. “A user will be able to access the sys tem with full rights and security from any point on the network,” says Jeff Collard, “and larger networks may have multiple users in different locations or require mobile access.”

Browser based systems rely on constantly requesting information from a central server. These, according to Omnivex, can be very slow when performing multiple tasks or making extensive changes. With Moxie, Omnivex contrived to make the user experience the same anywhere, with immediate response and complete control. Users can only access those functions they are permitted to see and so security is ensured, with efficiency optimised.

Moxie operates a content sensitive environment, according to Omnivex, presenting users with only the tools that are relevant to their current requirements and allowing them to preview effects on their content before being applied. “This greatly improves their productivity,” says Jeff Collard.

Moxie boasts complete network control: the Moxie environment is said to be self-discovering, meaning displays and computers are instantly recognised when plugged into the network, with the software configuring itself automatically. “This dramatically reduces the costs of installation or changes to the network,” comments Jeff Collard. ”If you replace a plasma display from one manufacturer to an LCD panel from another, you just plug it in. Moxie will do the rest.”

Moxie also heralds a rise of the bar on security. “All communications are easily encrypted, authenticated and permissioned down to a single variable,” maintains Jeff Collard. “That protects data and allows you to create a unique experience for every operator so they only have to deal with the components of your network pertaining to them. Remote updating, monitoring, alerting and management are available from any point on the network, making the complete system more reliable and robust, maximising uptime.”

Moxie’s new spider interface for easy network management.

Omnivex’s new digital signage system is innovative, with all event features made easy to get to with a ribbon system similar to that pioneered by Microsoft in Office 2007. Content is easy to design, create, test, initiate and all, says Jeff Collard. Notably the interface incorporates a new network management tool, the spider. With the spider, the network restructures itself according to whatever component you click on, for easy drilling down into the system. It builds a map of context, for example of customers, and deals with the data the same way. Throughout the system, everything is data, for effective use also by marketing and other department demographics. Moxie also features support for web based tools for scheduling media and more. It takes advantage of browser and client based systems to provide full access to all its capabilities.

So what’s the cost of the PC based software system? “A two screen system using our current product costs around £3000. Moxie is targeted at the enterprise market starting at 10~20 screens and will be priced comparably,” says Jeff Collard who concludes, “And for that, Moxie will get people thinking on how you can make digital signage more effective for growth for the future.”

W: www.omnivex.com

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