Digital Signage

Kazunori Tanikawa

Manager
Telecommunication Business UnitNEC Corporation

1. SG16 Question under Study 14 “DigitalSignage”
ITU-T SG16 Question under Study 14 (Q14/16) is a relatively
new question under study, established at the previous session(2013-2016) with the research theme of “Digital Signage”. The
question chairman (Rapporteur), Kazunori Tanikawa (NEC),and Associate Rapporteur, Shin-Gak Kang (ETRI, Korea) havebeen promoting standardization as an e-service for presenting
information, mainly outdoors. The current work items are shownin Table 1.

2. Digital Signage and the Tokyo Olympics/
Paralympics
Many participants and spectators will be visiting Tokyo for
the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, and digital signage isexpected to be used as a means of providing a wide range of
information services out-of-doors, including notices and warnings
regarding sporting events, tourism information, and disaster
information in the event of emergency. “Demonstration of disasterand other information provision according to multi-language
and other attributes using digital signage” was conducted as partof the 2016 Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
project, “Research contracts regarding regional demonstrationsfor implementing an IoT hospitality environment.” It included
discussion of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, and the results
have been published as the Digital Signage Consortium (DSC)
Operational Guidelines. (http://www.digital-signage.jp/).
In Table 1, the draft recommendations H.DS-PISR,“Service requirements and a reference model on information

services in public places via an interoperable service platform,”and H.DS-FIS, “Framework for interactive service,” were work
items proposed by Japan as a base for these guidelines. H.DSPSR handles requirements for establishing a common operating
platform for digital signage, so that information of consistentquality can be provided efficiently and reliably in a multi-vendor,
multi-operator environment. H.DS-FIS describes a framework
for advanced information services beyond conventional one-way
presentation of information by information providers on largescreen displays, linking smartphones to digital signage systems
and responding to the characteristics and demands of individuals.
HSTP.DS-WDS “Technical Paper on Digital signage: Webbased digital signage,” is also important regarding linking withsmartphones, so this study is proceeding while exchanging
information with W3C, in order to realize a lightweight, richly
expressive implementation using Web technologies such as the
widely available HTML5.

3. Discussion overview
The SG16 meeting was held from October 12 to 16, 2017 inChina (Macau), and the Q14/16 deliberation topics are introduced
below.
The objective of this meeting was to complete H.782“Metadata” (previous abbreviation: H.DS-META), so there
were two intervening meetings (teleconferences) to movetoward completion, and in this meeting, deliberation focused
chief ly on consistency between this specification and related
recommendations, and on revising wording. Consent was received
at the SG16 Plenary meeting. The basic service specifications■ Table 1: Q14/16 Work items
H.DS-AM

CodeTitle
Digital signage: Audience measurement

H.DS-ASM
H.DS-CASF

Digital signage: Metadata for alerting services
Common Alerting Service Framework for Digital Signage

H.DS-DCI
H.DS-FIS

Digital signage: Display device control interface
Digital signage: Framework for interactive service

H.DS-PISR

Digital signage: Service requirements and a reference model on
information services in public places via an interoperable service platform
Technical Paper on Digital signage: Use-cases regarding interactiveservicesTechnical Paper on Digital signage: Web-based digital signage

HSTP.DS-Gloss
HSTP.DS-WDS

2New Breeze Spring 2018Editor
M. Huh (ETRI),
H. Yamamoto (OKI)
M. Huh (ETRI)
M. Huh, W. Hyun,
H. Park (ETRI)
S. Kang, C. Lee (ETRI)
K. Tanaka (NTT),
S. Kwon, S. Kang (ETRI)
K. Tanikawa (NEC)
H. Kim (ETRI), K. Tanaka (NTT)S. Kwon (ETRI),
K. Tanaka (NTT)■ Table 2: Basic service metadata
Category
Terminal linking

Summary
Terminal initialization data, specifications, and operating state.

Connected device related

External devices connected to dedicated terminals

Content

Content data for presentation

ServerPlaylists

Information regarding various servers
Content display sequencing information

Play logs

Terminal operation data history

Schedules

Data distribution schedule management information

for digital signage (mainly one-way information presentationfrom service provider to viewer on dedicated digital signageterminals) are summarized in H.780 “Service Requirements”,H.781 “Architecture”, and H.782, which is discussed here. The
basic service metadata is categorized as indicated in Table 2.
As mentioned above, H.DS-PISR is an important discussiontheme for Japanese participants, introducing a usage concept
for the Interoperable Service Platform that is now under

Metadata example
TerminalId, Location, TerminalStatus,
DisplayInformation, CapabilityList, etc.
InteractiveDeviceID, Type, Status,
EventDataType, EventAction
ContentId, Title, Synopsis, KeywordList, Genre,
MimeType, Productiondate, etc.
ServerId, Location, Password, etc.
PlayListId, Priority, PlayOrder, ContentIDRef,
TargetRegion, Duration, etc.
LogItemType, ContentIdRef, PlayStatus,
StartDateTime, Duration, etc.
ScheduleId, PublicationDateTime,
SendDateTime, DeliveryMethod, etc.

consideration. Figure 1 presents a concept in which, in theupper part of the figure, original data is sent from information
sources, in the center it is converted to a common format by
the Interoperable Service Platform, and is then distributed to
dedicated digital signage terminals or terminals owned by viewers.
It also shows the potential for use in combination with external
cloud services.
In the figure, data is sent directly to terminals through the■ Figure 1: Concept of Interoperable Service Platform

New Breeze Spring 20183■ Figure 2: Collection of audience information

service platform, but to this point, most of the study has focusedon having content converted by the service platform and thensent back to the systems of each service operator, who will thendistribute it to their terminals.
At the previous meeting, H.DS-PIS was treated as arequirements document, but at this meeting, Japan submitted
additional high-level system requirements ref lecting thecontent of the guidelines mentioned earlier, as well as metadata
specifications, and these were approved. System requirements
needing consideration include specifications for terminal Push
notification services. Metadata needing consideration includes
data shared between Interoperable Service Platform and service
providers and required for content conversion, such as content
creation and creator data. It is also expected that guidanceservices will use requests from viewers and attributes from theirsmartphones (language type, terminal type, etc.), so requirements
for the handling of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) werealso added. These were based on Recommendation X.1058, issued
by ITU-T SG 17, which handles cross-disciplinary security issues.
The document is to be completed at the next SG16 meeting, inJuly.
H.DS-AM “Audience Measurement”, examines requirements,
system functionality and metadata for gathering information about
digital signage viewers, such as the number of viewers and staying
times. As shown in Figure 2, collection of audience information isconsidered an additional functionality for digital signage (dottedlines). It is based on the H.741 series of specifications alreadyreleased, on collection of IPTV viewer data. This meeting focused
discussion on overall consistency of specifications and defining
terminology. The document is also to be completed at the nextSG16 meeting.

4New Breeze Spring 2018

4. Future plans
Two intervening teleconference meetings, in March andMay, are planned before the next SG16 meeting, to work toward
completion of H.DS-PISR, H.DS-AM, and H.DS-DCI. We
are anticipating that the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics will
provide an opportunity to raise awareness of digital signage as apublic resource, and we need to study and organize use cases andsystem specifications toward advanced use of this resource. We
continue to look forward to active participation from Japan in therelevant fields.

Cover Art
Ichikawa Ebizou(Picture of kabuki actor
Ichikawa Ebizou (1833).
It is said that heis playing the role ofToba no Houou (11031156).)

Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865)

Collection of the Art Research Center(ARC)
Ritsumeikan University
Object number: arcUY0198