Christie acquires Montreal-based Arsenal Media Inc., a digital signage agency specializing in experiential installations, interactive content and strategic digital signage installations.

Arsenal Media will become Christie Creative Media Services, operating within Christie’s Global Professional Services group.

Arsenal Media’s track record in delivering high impact digital signage and experiential installations includes collaborations with clients such as Viacom, Caterpillar, Nielsen, Cineplex, Morguard, Freeman XP, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Gemological Institute of America, TAD Associates and the Montreal Convention Center.

Scala held its 2014 Conference at the Timber Lodge in the recently opened Olympic Park as part of London Digital Signage Week.

A smaller scale event from last year's conference, proceedings were opened by Scala CEO Tom Nix with a straight to the point keynote on the digital signage industry's top vertical-- retail. According to Scala retail is top signage driver, taking over 45% share of a "great" 2013.

Maybe you knew Alan from early days in consumer electronics at Amstrad like we did.

Maybe you knew him as chairman of Tottenham Hotspurs from 1991 to 2001. Or from the BBC TV series The Apprentice, based upon the popular US television show of the same name.

Or maybe you know him now as Lord Sugar-- owner of Amshold, and the digital signage division known as Amscreen.

In the digital signage industry, Amscreen describes itself as Europe’s largest, fastest growing digital outdoor network with 5000 screens reaches 50 million adults globally each week.

The digital signage market is expected to reach $17.1 billion by 2017, according to IHS, but keeping pace with the development and delivery of new, state-of-the-art signage can be time intensive for digital signage vendors.

To simplify and speed the system integration, design, deployment and management of digital signage solutions, Intel developed the new Intelligent Pluggable Systems Specification (IPSS).

The new system specification complements Intel’s Open Pluggable Specification (OPS) by encompassing hardware, software and technological solutions and enabling cost-effective, turnkey digital signs that are interoperable across vendors.

IPSS is supported by a range of companies including Axiomtek, BenQ, Gigabyte, Grundig, Heidi.com, JWIPC, Kontron, NEC, Nexcom, Philips, Pilot TV, Samsung Display, and TCL.

Go Intel IPSS

Vision will start shipping a 4K media player in Q4 this year.

The Vision Media Player (VMP) is already shipping an i5-powered device which can either drive two displays at 2560 x 1600 each, or three displays at 1920 x 1200 each.

The new 4K devices will be available with i3 and i5 processors and will feature an HDMI output and a DisplayPort output. The HDMI output offers up to 1920 x 1200 and the DisplayPort output offers up to 3840 x 2160.

The DisplayPort signal can also be daisy-chained on from the first DP monitor to a second at the same resolution, with independent content going to each monitor. This is a function of DP 1.2 is called Multi-Stream Transport.

Vision’s media players are full-powered open-platform computers which come with Windows or Linux OS pre-loaded. Vision offers SignageLive pre-installed.

Vision’s range includes the Techconnectmodular cable and faceplate family of products, the Techmount range of bracket solutions, and the Techaudio range of Amplifiers and speakers.

Go Intel IPSS

ViewPoint 3D Designer software enables the rapid creation of 3D-graphics content for presentations, simulations, digital signage, education, 3D printing and more.

Currently, says the software company, their software is unique in its ability to create 3D content in which 3D scene content can auto-update from remote data feeds, allowing, for example, 3D data displays, live 3D process monitoring mimic displays, or a real-time data live weather fly-through.

It can directly encode its output to drive glasses-free 3D monitors in the 2D+Depth and Autostereoscopic formats.

Elementary, my dear Watson...IBM invests part of a $100 million [£59.5 million] fund in Fluid Inc. to try and revolutionise the personal shopping landscape using the power and expertise that its Watson supercomputer can bring to the table.

Fluid and IBM will work together to change the way that consumers shop by creating personalised, digital experiences with a personal shopping concierge that understands and advises users on key purchase decisions in what the two hope is an "industry first."

AOpen launches its new Channel Partner Program (ACP) to drive growth in digital signage.

With digital signage revenue set to reach $15.1 billion (£8.95bn) in 2014, according to IHS forecasts, AOpen's new programme is designed to support its partners by giving them more information on marketing initiatives, events and training as well as offering them discounted, not-for-resale demonstration units. The program also includes a portal with live information on new products as and when they are available.

Anthony Gerrits, channel sales director AOpen Europe, says: "Through this program our customers will get information first-hand and they can benefit from unique promotions with participating AOpen distributors. The ACP programme includes incentives to reward our customers for their success with AOpen products, such as the 'project of the year award', where we will select the three best projects and [reward] them with a written case study and free publicity.