Charlottetown’s ScreenScape Announces Results of Partnerships with CBC and Dell Canada

Charlottetown-based ScreenScape, makers of a plug-and-play device and accompanying software that allows users to control video content over multiple screens, has announced the fruits of two major partnerships, with CBC and Dell Canada.

Firstly, the CBC has chosen ScreenScape as their preferred digital signage partner, opening a new distribution network for the national broadcaster in store fronts, show rooms, lobbies, waiting rooms, or any other location where digital signage makes sense.

The CBC deal will make the network’s news, sports and entertainment content available to ScreenScape users on a two-tiered pay-per-use basis, with the first tier representing a standard CBC feed and the second-tier allowing users to customize content.

“By bundling CBC/Radio-Canada premium content with our easy to use content management tools, we are able to offer our customers a range of compelling new programming options,” said ScreenScape CEO, Mark Hemphill.  “This is content CBC/Radio-Canada is well known for, and simply great at producing. The feeds are fully managed and served up in the order of minutes, which helps our customers keep their programming fresh and full of relevant content.”

“This is also a coming of age story for the industry that we call place-based media,” wrote ScreenScape in an email. “The partnership was initiated by the CBC and many see this move by Canada’s public broadcaster as validating not just for ScreenScape, a leading technology provider, but the medium as a whole.”

The second partnership, with Dell Canada, has perhaps even more far-reaching implications for the PEI company.

Back in October, ScreenScape unveiled its Connect product at the Dell World conference in Austin, Texas.

Connect represented a breakthrough for the company, the first stick-sized smart device for digital signage, developed in collaboration with Dell Wyse. The collaboration between ScreenScape’s software, called Smart Player for Android, and Dell hardware, Dell Wyse Cloud Connect, allows users to easily stream video signage content across multiple screens, the complex setup process for which had previously deterred many businesses from investing in display technology.

In the first week of February, Dell Canada plans to highlight its collaboration with ScreenScape by featuring two early success stories: Source for Sports and PEI-based Murphy’s Pharmacies.

ScreenScape’s technology is being touted as Apple TV for Business, in that it brings a plug-and-play solution to video display commerce. It’s all part of a growing field that the company refers to as “place-based media”, which is rapidly turning screens in public places into location-specific media channels.

The partnerships with CBC and Dell Canada represent a leap forward for marketing technology developed in Canada’s smallest, but mightiest province.