I’ve been a Scala fan ever since I saw my first demo a couple of years ago. From what I saw, anyone who is even remotely software savvy can author professional-level multimedia content for dynamic signage networks, Cable TV and the Web (it really did look that easy).
The onscreen content looks and works great, but the real beauty of Scala is what you don’t see. The backend functions of scheduling, managing, distributing, playing back and delivery verification are what place Scala at the right place and definitely at the right time.
"With the explosion of out-of-the-home media, we can’t really turn around anymore without seeing plasma screens or LCDs, they’re showing up in all kinds of places," says Jeff Porter, president and CEO of Scala. "But these locations need to be able to do more than just show CNN."
It’s not necessarily a new concept for stores to show information to customers in a store, for example. For years CRT monitors hung from the ceiling and somewhere, a videotape or maybe DVD played the content on each monitor. Change a store special or want to advertise a new one? You’d have to produce another high quality video with actors, equipment, then duplicate and Fed Ex the tapes or DVDs.
"As a result," says Porter, "a lot of the content was generic because they couldn’t afford to produce and distribute these tapes more than once a month."
But today, take a look at Jewson, the UK’s largest chain of building supply stores. They are running 1,000 displays in 550 stores using Scala. Half of the screens educate customers; the other half train Jewson employees. Or look at Best Buy, which was distributing DVDs monthly to hundreds of stores. They had no way of customizing at the store level until they implemented Scala. Best Buy says they are now more tightly integrated with current promotions and campaigns which, when timed with record or film companies for example, lets them garner maximum impact.
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Best Buy’s content partner EDR Corporation found Scala, and they say one of the biggest values is the broadcast network. EDR wrote some of the necessary code for this but realized it was beyond their scope. Scala had a tried and proven solution.
"Our core competency is about creating rich media content for broadcasting and narrowcasting," says EDR President Peter Vrettas. "We produce programming that is designed to influence and entertain, to make something happen. We don’t want to have to think about the delivery process. But, we do want to know that our programming is running consistently and with high quality. Scala gives us that confidence."
So as mentioned earlier, Scala lets you create, schedule, manage, broadcast and verify -- a true end-to-end solution. While I understood the value of this solution, I never understood how Pro AV systems integrators could get into the act. Until, that is, Scala introduced Scala InfoChannel 3.
"We went back and redefined a lot of things based on where we are aiming our products," Jeff Porter told KNews. "In the past, where you’ve noticed a graphical authoring tool that can do all kinds of presentations, we’re best known for our work in Cable TV. In fact, there is barely a Cable TV network on the planet that isn’t using Scala.
"But we expanded to include broadcast multimedia and some of our customers are doing significant deployment of global networks of remote control screens."
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