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I could just not stop going up and down the escalators.

Tube Digital Signage May Submitted By a Special Digital Signage Forum Member "kike" 18/19/20 2007

This past weekend, I visited the London Underground Stations that are running Digital Escalator Panels(DEPs).Charing Cross, Paddington, Tottenham Rd, and Euston have the most amazing setup that I have seen in the past years.

There were about 66 screens in Charing Cross station,68 in Paddington, 50 in Tottenham Court Rd, and 48 inEuston.The DEPs, all in portrait mode, seemed to be grouped depending on the advert they play.  This way, the advert followed me while going down or up for 4 or 5 screens, then another advert would start.

All DEPs were perfectly synched. The adverts that were grouped into 4 or 5 DEPs had original artwork effects. The advert would start on 1 panel, then it seemed to slide into the next one with additional information about the product and so on for the 4/5 screens. There were also adverts that played on all of the screens, and other adverts that had a holding file at the end of the group.

The loops were short, about 10 seconds per each advertisement and they seemed to repeat every 2 minutes.  However, the loops changed during the day (different adverts during morning/evening), which probably means that they have control over different day parts. I also saw a few LCD screens in Charing Cross, incredible. They were about 60", portrait mode, unbelievable clarity and perfect play out.  They were running different content than the DEPs, 5 sec adverts in a much shorter loop). The only thing I found wrong was at Tottenham Rd. install.  The install seemed to be much older, screens were dirty, and it didn't look as good as the other three stations at all.  Synchronization was still perfect, but image quality and overall setup was much worse.

All in all one of the most impressive setups I have seen in the past years.  Disregarding Tottenham Court Road, in all other stations, the hardware presentation was flawless, synchronization was perfect and content extremely original.  I could just not stop going up and down the escalators.

My congratulations to the owners,  software and hardware providers of this project.