Paddy Baker is shown the latest software for updating Tripleplay systems, which puts the emphasis on ease of use and visual design.
At the Reflex Tech Day in March at the Business Design Centre, London, I was given a demonstration of Tripleplay’s new Bart 3.0 software by Adele Thornton, account manager with Tripleplay.
Tripleplay’s Media Video Player (MVP) is an enterprise video delivery platform that can be used for digital signage, IPTV, video on demand and more; and Bart 3.0 is the application that is used to access and customise it.
“One of the ways we differentiate ourselves is that it’s not just about content on a screen – it’s content relevant to you, at that time,” she explained. “So if I work in a university working and I’m in a particular faculty, I’ll only see information relevant to my faculty; similarly if we were pushing this out to student desktops, they’d only get the information that was relevant to them.”
The example of the MVP used in the demo was designed for a hospitality provider, but it can be tailored for any company, with its own logo and background images. “So this could be a corporate organisation with a preview window for corporate video, its own internal information, and live RSS feeds of news, travel or weather updates.”
Signage editor
One of the new features in Bart 3.0 is the 3Create visual signage editor. This enables signage screen layouts to be designed in seconds, even by non-technical staff. Thumbnails of all the available assets are shown in a column on the right-hand side of the screen. To create a screen layout, simply drag and drop the desired elements onto the preview area on the left of the screen. These can be rearranged and resized until the desired layout has been achieved.
Content for these layouts can be updated using the Quickdrop function, which has been improved for this software release. “It’s essentially like a shortcut on your desktop. You don’t need to know about MAC addresses, IP addresses, or which boxes are talking to which screens,” explained Thornton. “If I’m a receptionist, for example, if someone gives me a link to some content, I don’t need to worry about what size or format it’s in – I just open up my Quickdrop link, drag and drop the file, and I see the change in a second.” The new content is added to the layout that the Quickdrop link is associated with. A wide variety of file types are supported here, including images, videos, PowerPoint and even live streamed content.
Also new in Bart 3.0 is a more visual treatment of the node hierarchy. Set-top boxes and other devices can now be added or reassigned via drag-and-drop without having to go into the system back-end.
In summary, said Thornton, “it’s more visual and easier to use. We’ve hidden away some of technology and made it more about users, so there’s less of a need for training.”
