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X2O Media's Digital Signage Platform Powers Nation's Largest LED Billboard

Posted on Wednesday, January 28, 2009

D3 LED Used X2O’s Resolution-Independent Player to Provide Real-Time Capabilities to Synchronize Over 17,000 Square Feet of Signage at the One Times Square Building

MONTREAL — Jan. 28, 2009 — X2O Media, a world leader in technology, content services, and content design for digital signage, was a key partner in creating the nation’s largest digital billboard. Designed for the Walgreens flagship store, the billboard resides at New York City’s One Times Square, a historic landmark where the famous New Year's Eve Ball descends from the flagpole atop the building each year. New York-based D3 LED utilized X2O’s Xpresenter™ 2.1 digital signage platform to create the 30 story tall LED spectacular. The X2O end-to-end solution delivers seamless messages and images 20 hours a day to countless passersby in vibrant Times Square.

D3 LED engineers and manufactures the world’s most sophisticated advertising spectaculars, stadium and arena displays, information ticker and marquee systems, and customized digital solutions. Designed to break the mold in how the Walgreens brand interacts with consumers, the digital billboard at One Times Square utilizes 10,987 display modules, each containing 1,024 to 1,600 pixels, for unparalleled high-resolution graphics. The result is over 17,000 square feet of dynamic digital LED signage extending 341 feet above the ground on three sides of the building, complemented by 13 digital signs surrounding the building at street level. Weighing in at 125 tons, the spectacular covers over one third of an acre with more than 12 million LEDs powered by 150 gigs of data throughout.

D3 LED required a digital signage platform featuring a resolution-independent player with real-time capabilities to synchronize all the display modules, including the 13 signs on the ground. To accomplish this, they chose X2O Media’s Xpresenter.

“TheWalgreens project was extremely complex,” said Meric Adriansen, managing partner, D3 LED. “We needed media players that could keep up with the extreme resolution systems that we had built and that could synchronize across the whole system. X2O Media worked closely with us to make this project a success.”

The Xpresenter solution is an end-to-end digital signage platform with a number of applications that support content authoring, scheduling, distribution, and remote management. Xpresenter Template Maker is a powerful application that integrates directly with Microsoft^® PowerPoint^®, providing digital signage operators with the unique ability to create broadcast-quality graphics that incorporate video, animations, clip art galleries, and real-time data sources from within the familiar PowerPoint interface.

“We feel it is a true testament to our technology that Xpresenter was chosen for such a large-scale application in such a high-profile location,” stated David Wilkins, X2O Media’s President and CEO. “For a project of this magnitude, the quality of the output is paramount. The Xpresenter suite not only covered all the steps in the digital signage workflow, from content authoring to scheduling, but it also delivered better than broadcast-quality graphics and video in real time to the largest LED screen in the U.S.”

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