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For the past decade, Dynamax has been providing digital signage software for a wide range of companies – from small and medium-sized enterprises to Fortune 500 global corporations. In 2010, the company launched digitalsignage.net, its cloud-based digital signage application, which is currently being used by educational institutions, and in the retail and the corporate sectors internationally.

While described by the manufacturer as simple to use, the system presents many of the features of POVng, Dynamax's flagship on-premises Enterprise product operated by large organisations and media owners. The digitalsignage.net system is based on Amazon's EC2 cloud solution and is able to support an unlimited number of content channels, media players and screens.

The digitalsignage.net application allows its users to upload and publish a wide range of digital signage content such as videos (MPEG1/2, AVI, MOV [H264]), images (JPG, PNG), feeds (RSS, XML, IPTV) and HTML5 files from any internet-connected Windows PC. It can play 720p to 1080p, supports CV and S-video live video inputs, and MP3 sound formats. In addition, digitalsignage.net supports lightweight media players and is fully compatible with IAdea's HTML5 devices.

Scheduling features are also provided by digitalsignage.net – by time of the day, day of the week or day of the month – and system performance reports allow users to monitor the system's health from any internet-enabled location.

To help users in the content-creation process, Dynamax's software product comes with an ever-increasing number of HTML5 widgets including a calendar, clock, weather information and Twitter feeds, and a built-in layout engine, in order to support the display of multiple types of information simultaneously.

Merseyside railway operator Merseyrail is among the users of digitalsignage.net. Thomas Philips, business analyst at Merseyrail, provides his insights on using the software: "As the system we had in place was limiting the types of messages we could communicate and started to become redundant, we looked for potential ways to upgrade it. Dynamax's digitalsignage.net seemed a simple solution that could be deployed over our existing IT hardware infrastructure."

He adds: "The user-friendly interface allowed us to involve our staff regardless of their technical skills and enable them to use content already created by their colleagues, further decreasing the amount of work required for updating the system."

The subscription-only software offers administration settings at administrator, organisation channel and player levels. Dynamax is offering free trials of digitalsignage.net upon request from the company's website. The software is available internationally.