Digital billboards premiered at Cannes

Global outdoor advertising company JCDecaux appropriately premiered the new generation of high resolution magink-based digital billboards at the 59th Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday. The magink digital ink billboards are installed at multiple highly trafficked venues in Cannes, including one located adjacent to the Palais des Festivals, the official home of the Cannes Film Festival. The new displays will feature an array of full-motion video advertisements and information on the City of Cannes. The digital ink technology offers full-color, full-motion, high resolution and high contrast images that use ambient light to enhance image quality and visibility -- just like ink on paper. Beyond the world of billboard advertising, magink will also be used with other display applications such as consumer electronic products, in-store point-of-purchase, and promotional displays. (via gizmag.co.uk)

While this billboards cost far less than large-scale video screens, they are not inexpensive, Mr. McConnell said. One sign he is testing, measuring about 10 feet by 20 feet, cost $80,000. A standard billboard of about equal size would cost about $10,000, but would also require costly installation crews to change displays. More significantly, advertising companies could sell space on the billboards by the hour.

Ran Poliakine, chief executive of Magink, the technology maker behind the signs, said the idea was to create visually compelling ads that could be replaced frequently - perhaps hourly, based on consumer response - and could be controlled remotely, all with far less energy and at a far lower cost than a video billboard.

Mr. Poliakine said Magink, which has research operations in England and Israel, was the first company to bring full-color digital ink displays to the marketplace. And soon, he said, its creation will begin competing more directly with traditional billboards in the $19 billion worldwide outdoor-advertising market. Nomad Worldwide, at its Jersey City plant, is among those evaluating the technology's potential.

"The last revolution was computer printing, and we believe the next revolution is digital ink on billboards," Mr. Poliakine said, comparing his company's advances to the first digital printing of billboard images more than a decade ago. Now, he added, his three-year-old company is also studying ways to expand the application of its core technology to personal electronics, including cellular telephones, cameras, hand-held computers and general video displays for laptops and televisions.

Magink prototype screens are capable of displaying video images at more than 70 frames a second, twice the speed needed to produce smooth, cinematic motion. But the digital images share so many of the characteristics of paper, its makers say, that they are easily viewed in bright sunlight but must be lighted much like conventional billboards when there is little light.

MAGINK DISPLAY TECHNOLOGIES LTD. (formerly E-Magin Ltd.) is an
R&D subsidiary of California based company.
MAGINK develops proprietary, full-color, commercially-viable
digital ink technologies. The company's mission is to
continuously develop revolutionary digital ink core technology
and provide highly efficient, variable resolution, full-color,
high contrast, low energy and cost effective digital display
applications and solutions to a broad array of global industries.

MAGINK's core technology enables to create affordable "paper
like" lightweight low power indoor and outdoor displays, which
can perfectly fit into numerous applications. Its underlying
properties fundamentally change the economics of digital content
display.

The company is currently commercializing its digital ink
technology for the outdoor advertising market, Transportation
market, consumer electronic products, in-store point-of-purchase,
and promotional displays.