The Net-Top-Box is a Digital Signage Solution-in-a-box. There is no software to install as it comes pre-loaded on the hardware. Its an on-off purchase with no recurring license fees.
The Net-Top-Box is installed on the network and controlled through any web browser on any PC or Mac in the organisation. The Net-Top-Box does not require a keyboard or mouse itself.
The Net-Top-Box can send a single VGA output to a large display device such as an LCD, plasma or projector. It's not intended to stream the output to other computers.
Media content must be finalised before uploading to the Net-Top-box. Depending on your choice of media, you can do this with any common Video, Photo, Flash or HTML editing tools. If an external media house is being used, they will use the appropriate tools.
The Net-Top-Box supports a large number of multi-media formats in combination. This allows you to combine video or live TV with scrolling text, photos, Flash and web content.
Content is uploaded onto the Net-Top-Box once, stored on the disk, inserted into a playlist and then played from the disk. The Net-Top-Box is not normally used to play streams from a separate server, it is better to copy that media onto the Net-Top-Box and play it from there. Once content is uploaded to the Net-Top-Box, its network bandwidth requirement becomes negligible.
Every zone in the display layout has its own playlist. Every playlist runs in a loop so there are never any gaps and there is no timeline scheduling. Zones can be optionally synchronised to link playlists.
Content that has been defined as locally customisable can be customised by individual subscribers. For example; allowing one Net-Top-Box to welcome visitors to the "London Office" while another Net-Top-Box in the same 'Channel' welcomes visitors to the "Sydney Office".
One Net-Top-Box can clone its media from (subscribe to) another Net-Top-Box over the network. This standard feature, known as Channel Manager , allows the same output to be shown on displays more than 500m away, or even on the other side of the world.
The diagram below shows how it works.
