First, what even is a digital signage player? Basically, it’s a PC that is expected to operate unattended playing video or slide shows in an endless loop. If you ever passed by a realtor’s or travel agent’s office with a TV or a monitor in a shop window playing listings or destination videos, you’ve seen a digital signage player in action.
Why do I think this is interesting hardware? Here are a few reasons:
- The processing power tends to be totally outsized compared to the device’s physical size, its storage capacity, and its networking throughput
- The devices are designed for unattended operation, potentially in confined spaces
- Many (though not all) models feature dual Ethernet ports
As an example, I recently spent some time with Actineon Wiisper 10QM. Here are some official photos from the manufacturer:
One notable design element, fairly typical of this hardware class, is the air intake on top with a fan underneath. There is no single exhaust point; rather, warm air exits through perforations on both sides of the device. Why this kind of cooling? Because the device runs on a full-fat 65 W i5-6500. In networking, this opens up some interesting possibilities involving next-generation services.
Here’s the inside view:
It appears that we have a garden-variety mini-ITX system board by AsRock. The processor, as I already mentioned, is an i5-6500 (for context, this is what mid-range 1U rack-mountables run on; examples include Sophos 330 Rev 2 and WatchGuard Firebox M570). There are two 4 GB sticks of DDR4-2133 memory, a 120 GB mSATA SSD, and a mini-PCIe slot for a wireless network card (there are two openings for antennas on the front panel of the device). Wired networking consists of two Ethernet controllers, one Intel i219-LM, and one Intel i210. The former is probably better suited to be a LAN controller.
The device threw no impediments to changing the OS; there are no BIOS passwords, watchdogs, or bypasses.
There are also similar, but less muscular, devices in this category, featuring T-series Core processors or G-series Celerons and Pentiums.
In my opinion, this sort of device can fit very well in a niche situation where dual ports are sufficient, but significant processor capacity is required (VPN, IDS/IPS, malware detection, etc.).