News

Cisco signage helps school deliver audience with the Dalai Lama

December 3, 2007

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Cisco helped the University of Münster overcome security, space and time constraints to deliver a dignitary's speech to a widely-dispersed campus audience.

The University of Münster (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster or WWU) was able to install a Cisco Digital Media System (DMS) for digital signage in less than three weeks to broadcast an honorary degree acceptance speech by the Dalai Lama to viewers across campus.

Cisco DMS is a comprehensive solution for the creation, management and access of digital media for digital signage and desktop video. For digital signage, it offers a way to manage and publish this digital media across networked, on-premise displays.

Its use helped WWU overcome two challenges: the need for tight security and the limited space of the speaker venue, which restricted its ability to accommodate the vast audience of individuals interested in attending.

WWU's campus is made up of approximately 350 buildings in locations spread throughout the city, which meant that even providing overflow capacity in nearby rooms would not solve the dilemma of allowing an extensive audience to hear and see the speech.

"The challenge was for the IT department to set up a secure, reliable solution in a relatively short amount of time," said Guido Wessendorf, project manager for the initiative.

"However, due to its simplicity, we were able to successfully deploy the Cisco Digital Media System in what we were afraid was an unrealistic timeframe."

Cisco digital signage products include digital media encoders that digitize the live video stream and then deliver it to a server for distribution to a number of small form-factor, IP-based Digital Media Players (DMPs).

Cisco DMPs control the playback of content to the digital signage displays and run on a hardened version of Linux for added robustness and security. For the Dalai Lama event, Cisco used redundant Scientific Atlanta D9032 MPEG-2 video encoders and five DMPs.

Four of the DMPs were connected to video projectors located in lecture rooms in different university buildings and the fifth fed into a video wall in WWU's main conference hall.

With DMS, WWU achieved something it never had done before: showing a live broadcast across the entire university campus.

"The Cisco Digital Media Players were very robust, providing an exceptional high-quality image," said Wessendorf. "With the Web interface, it was extremely simple to configure with just a few clicks of the mouse."

"It was challenging because of the high visibility of the event, with German VIPs and politicians in attendance, and the very short notice available in which to make it possible," said Frédéric Groussolles, Cisco Digital Media solutions marketing manager for Europe. "This event also immediately preceded a meeting between the Dalai Lama and the Chancellor, Angela Merkel. As a long-standing technology adviser to WWU, we were glad to take on the task of helping ensure that the video delivery for the event would be successful."