Digital signage systems handle both non-real-time as well as near-real-time and live
content simultaneously. This leads to new problems related to the operation of the
system. It will take many years to fully explore these aspects. In this chapter,
however, I have tried to gather number of known facts about this area. Naturally
there are tremendous differences between handling digital signage systems based on
manual, broadband or satellite distribution. Chapter 10, contains a comparison of
the distribution media. Also analyzed are the break-even points between different
distribution media (More details about this can be found in Appendix A).
Questions related to the need of separate broadband connections so as not to interfere
with the transactional traffic to stores, or using scheduled download of content
outside business hours, are discussed. Finally, hybrid systems that use satellite
for point-to-multipoint traffic combined with broadband for the point-to-point related
return path traffic are described.
Analyzing the kind of traffic and choosing distribution methods accordingly might
lead to a digital signage distribution system that uses satellite multicasting for
content delivery and unicast broadband for return communication.
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