You are in the process of deploying a digital signage network and the question of content format arises. Which content format should you choose—video or flash? Well the answer depends upon your hardware budget, what you want to do today and what you expect to do in the future.

Let’s start with a discussion about hardware budgets. Digital signage networks that rely on content built in video formats generally use less expensive hardware. Digital signage players designed for video are less expensive because displaying video content on the LCD panel does not require a lot of computing power by today’s standards. This can be accomplished with relative inexpensive chips (the electronics) inside of a digital signage player.

Digital signage networks that rely on content built in Flash require players with more computing horsepower and thus use more expensive hardware—CPUs, GPUs, memory, etc…. Flash content is rendered in real-time on the digital signage player and then displayed on the LCD panel. The computing power needed to render the Flash content increases as the complexity of the content increases.

So video is the clear winner, right?

Not necessarily, it depends upon what you want to do today. If the primary goal is to broadcast passive content to as many locations as possible at the lowest cost then a video centric content strategy and network may be the way to go. Any additional information added to the video stream (stock tickers, weather information or other feeds) will have to be done before the video stream leaves the production and broadcast facility. Depending upon how much additional information has to be added, as well as additional hardware needed for the broadcast facility to accomplish the task, can easily drive up the total cost and offset any savings from the digital signage players.

Also video content has to be streamed or transmitted to display location which consumes bandwidth. You can install a media server at each physical location to deliver content to multiple digital signage players, just be sure to factor the additional hardware and bandwidth charges into the total cost. With Flash the content files are stored locally on digital signage player and then rendered to the display so the need to constantly deliver content either through a media server or directly to a player as in the case of video content, is greatly diminished.

So more expensive general purpose players that support Flash are the way to go, right?

Again not necessarily, if the goal is to create flexible, dynamic and engaging content that the audience or a viewer can interact with using a touch screen or other feedback device then a Flash based content strategy is the only practical option. You could have developers build content with software development tools used for complete applications, but this would be a very expensive and time consuming choice.

So what is the right choice?

To determine what is right today, you must look to the future where you will most likely want to have a digital signage network that not only delivers passive content inexpensively, but also have the ability for your audience to interact with content and provide valuable feedback. So this means the best solution is a hybrid—capable of displaying video and/or rendering Flash content. For locations that will only have passive content, such as a display in a waiting area or check out line, a video content delivered to a low cost digital signage player optimized for video is fine. For locations that you may at any point in the future to provide interactive content a higher performing digital signage player capable of rendering Flash is the clear choice—even if you are not sure right now and only use it for video content.

Now the next decision you to make, is what strategy and tools are need to produce Flash or video content. That is a topic for another discussion.