Digital signage media player provider BrightSign has stated that it will demonstrate its first-ever solid state, commercial 4K digital signage media player next month. The company will also present new features for its BrightAuthor range of XD and HD players at that time.

For the former, BrightSign will demonstrate its new 4K signage media player with the help of 4K UHD Seiki Digital displays, arranged both in landscape and portrait, in order to show the superiority of 4K over HD in signage applications. As for the latter, an update to the BrightAuthor content management software, alongside firmware version 4.7, will bring new features — including BrightWall, a content creation tool for making video walls in any size layout — to current BrightSign device users.

The most exciting aspect of BrightAuthor 3.8, though, is its new HTML5 and IP streaming capabilities. For starters, updated XD players will receive support for full HD video streaming, including HLS, SHOUTcast and video streaming in HTML. Even further, BrightSign XD players will now be able to act as IP streaming servers to serve locally stored content to other players or devices.

In terms of pure HTML5 features, it seems the BrightSign XD player range will soon offer hardware-accelerated HTML5 rendering which will, quite simply, allow users to accomplish more using HTML. More specifically, HTML5 applications should perform very smoothly, with none of the stuttering that is common to Android (News – Alert) devices and PCs that use software-based HTML rendering. This is because HTML assets now exist on the BrightSign canvas as independent packages, allowing HTML5 to be integrated cleanly with other content.

This update builds on last month’s BrightAuthor 3.7 release, which introduced BrightSign’s first real dose of enhanced HTML5 support, including a new level of interactivity when it comes to JavaScript extensions.