In the new product showcase area set up at last week's Digital Signage Expo 2011 in Las Vegas, there were two outdoor digital signage enclosures:
One, you could hear the air conditioning unit for cooling the enclosed display from 10-20 feet away – the other, with three large displays to cool, you could just hear the humming when you stood next to it.
Even the convention center security guard noticed the difference.
The quiet one was the new ViewStation QSR outdoor digital menu board enclosure from ITSEnclosures. The company developed the new outdoor enclosure, which has to keep cool three high-brightness digital displays for outdoor daytime viewing, specifically for Wendy's and is rolling them out to 30 Wendy's locations for trials in Boston and Phoenix.
ITSEnclosures takes great pride in its quiet thermal-management system, Director of Business Development Karl Jackson said on the show floor.
"We pride ourselves in the aspect that we can not only keep the units cool but relatively quiet as well," he said. "When you're in the drive-thru of course you have to have communications with the person inside, and if the enclosure is making too much noise it makes it quite difficult to have that communication."
In addition to the new QSR enclosure, ITSEnclosures also was highlighting its kiosk application with a point-of-sale credit swipe and a touch-capable outdoor enclosure for large-format displays.
The company also is in discussions with other QSR chains for pilots of the new QSR enclosure, Jackson said:
"We are seeing this year being a good launch year for us, but probably 2012 is going to be the year where we're seeing that we could probably put well over 1,000 units in the field."
