By Jeff Hastings
CEO, BrightSign

Each year, growth in our category is driven by innovation — advancements in key areas that cause our customers to invest in digital signage to help propel their businesses forward. I believe that 4K will be the catalyst that drives this growth in 2014.

Unfortunately there’s significant trepidation about 4K, so we face the challenge of demystifying the possibilities – explaining the opportunities surrounding an investment in a digital signage deployment that will fully harness the power of 4K in 2014 and beyond.

In much the same way the broadcast industry struggled with HD until 1080p content became commonplace, the digital signage industry will face a similar challenge as 4K begins to hit its stride. For this reason, it is critical that we help our customers future-proof their digital signage investment.

As an example, we had the pleasure of working with Seiki Digital at the IFA tradeshow in Berlin this fall. We partnered to deliver beautiful 1080p up-converted content to their 4K screens and the Seiki displays looked stunning. It was a simple yet powerful demonstration of the same 1080p content delivered to a Full HD display and a new 4K/UHD display side-by-side. The superior picture quality delivered by BrightSign to the 4K UHD screen was quite evident.

In the coming year, signage installations should include screens that are capable of displaying 4K content. The improvement in picture quality is nothing short of outstanding. And even though 4K content may initially be scarce, the screens paired with a media player capable of the highest quality video up-scaling can do a fantastic job of displaying existing Full HD content at 4K resolution.

There will be a lot of excitement around 4K in the coming year. This presents us with an opportunity to prove our worth to our customers – to counsel them on the possibilities for upgrading to 4K signage, and to deliver solutions that will scale seamlessly as they make the migration forward.

This column was reprinted with permission from the Digital Screenmedia Association and originally appeared here.