Cisco Cast Module for Cisco Digital Media Manager 5.4

The Power of Engagement: Cisco Digital Signage is a platform for interactive media experiences. Now you can easily deliver and manage applications to communicate, connect, and engage. Imagine delivering compelling and interactive media to any store, bank, manufacturing floor, or hospital, to engage customers and employees in a whole new way.

The scalable, network-based Cisco Digital Signage platform consists of management software, digital media players, interactive thin clients, and displays. On top of this, Cisco’s diverse partner ecosystem tailors your deployment to your needs. This gives you new opportunities to create a consistent user experience across multiple channels, increase revenue and maximize operational efficiency.

Cisco Cast

Cisco Cast is a business IPTV applicaton that delivers live and on-demand video and broadcast TV channels over IP to digital screens.

Cisco Cast is an add-on module that uses the Cisco Digital Media Player (DMP) to full advantage to allow you to conveniently and quickly browse and view digital media programs interactively through the DMP remote control over an IP network through your standard- and high-definition displays. It uses standard video-streaming technologies to deliver a compelling live and on-demand video experience. Supported on the Cisco Digital Media Player 4310, and DMP 4400 systems, Cisco Cast fits easily into your organization’s existing IT infrastructure and supports established video formats, including MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 (Part-2), and Windows Media 9 on both the DMP 4400 and DMP 4310 platforms. The Digital Media Player 4310 system also supports H.264 (MPEG4-Part 10) format.

Cisco Cast includes a web-based management tool, the Cisco Cast Manager, which resides on the Cisco Digital Media Manager (DMM). Through the Cisco Cast Manager, you can configure and define your own live or on-demand channel lineups as well as subscribe to syndicated third-party electronic-program-guide (EPG) services to populate an on-screen program guide for time-of-day listings of syndicated television programs. The Cisco Cast Manager tool allows you to customize your DMPs on the screen guide by adding your corporate logos or by selecting from the many templates provided for tailoring your organization’s color scheme.

The integrated products of Cisco Cast follow:

●   Cisco Digital Media Manager (DMM): This web-based media management application allows you to easily manage, schedule, and publish digital media through the web to Cisco Show and Share and to digital signage displays.

●   Cisco Digital Media Players (DMPs): The Cisco DMP 4310, and DMP 4400 allow for both live and on-demand streaming digital media across an IP network in a variety of encoding formats.

 

Together, these products span the digital media value chain and can help your organization reach customers, partners, employees, and students with real-time, relevant content and communications.

Applications

Using the network as a platform for digital media publishing and access provides organizations in many different industries with innovative tools for internal and external communications, marketing, sales, education, and training. For example, through Cisco Cast, you can give a widely dispersed employee base live access to a CEO keynote broadcast, internal business communication programs, or educational broadcasts along with on-demand access to these programs after the live event.

Other applications include:

●   Financial services: You can train remote customer service representatives in a remote classroom setting without the time and expense of making employees travel.

●   Retail: You can offer customers quick and easy communication through the high-definition displays about new products and promotions, and offer broadcasts of live promotional events.

●   Education: You can extend the classroom to include remote, live broadcast and viewing of lectures as well as on-demand access to past recorded events.

●   Government: You can facilitate live simulcast access to government meetings and hearings and provide access to digital media-based information about relevant regulations and laws.

 

You can customize the interface of the Cisco Cast program guide through the Cisco Cast Manager to reflect brand or purpose.

Key Features and Benefits

Cisco Cast: Access to Compelling Live and On-Demand Video

Cisco Cast makes it easy for you to access compelling content in standard- or high-definition formats. The application offers sophisticated functions, including:

●   Program listing and EPG: You can easily locate relevant media by content category for video-on-demand (VoD) files, or title and channel for live feeds.

●   Customizable channel lineups: You can choose from a dynamic list of program channels defined by content publishers and deployed as needed to the digital media players.

●   On-demand content: You can access on-demand programs through the easy-to-navigate menu systems of the on-screen program guides to access recorded video such as training programs, executive broadcasts, and customer promotional materials.

●   Video program sharing: You can take advantage of the same digital media video programs used in your digital signage presentations as on-demand assets for users to browse and view.

●   Live and on-demand program previews: You can preview programs or continue to view live events while you navigate the on-demand or live program listings.

●   Scheduled access to Cisco Cast: When used along with Cisco Digital Signs, you can define when a directed signage presentation or Cisco Cast access is available on your digital media players.

Cisco Cast Subscription Service: Syndicated Broadcast Program Listings

You can use Cisco Cast to subscribe to syndicated EPG services to allow your program guide to display syndicated program time-of-day schedules. You can also create your own program guide lineup and publish it alone or in addition to a subscription service.

With the Cisco Cast Subscription Service tool, you can:

●   Allow viewers to browse up to 6 hours in advance for your defined channels

●   Automatically update channel guide information

●   Mix both syndicated and user-defined channel time-of-day program listings

Product Specifications

Table 1 gives features and Table 2 gives client requirements for Cisco Cast on the Cisco Digital Media Manager.

Table 1.       Cisco Cast Features

Table 2.       Cisco Digital Media Manager Supported OS and Browsers

Ordering Information

Table 3 provides software upgrades information for the Cisco Digital Media Manager.

Table 3.       Software Upgrades

Service and Support

Cisco and our partners provide a broad portfolio of smart, personalized services and support that can help you realize the full value of your video investment, increase business agility and network availability. This portfolio of services drives business transformation through a network-based collaboration platform that enables business to collaborate anywhere, anytime. For more information about these services, visit: http://www.cisco.com/go/services/digitalmedia.

For more information

For more information about the Cisco Digital Signage, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/dms or contact your local Cisco account representative.