Cinergy cut its cinema signage costs by moving from Apple TV to Screenly

Cinergy Entertainment Group replaced Apple TVs with 40 Screenly players running Ubuntu Core across its Texas cinema entertainment centers and saved around $50,000.

Cinergy Entertainment Group runs cinema entertainment centers in Texas. Each 90,000 square foot site has a 10-screen dine-in cinema, 18 bowling lanes, bars, restaurants, party rooms, escape rooms, laser tag and a rope course. The company was founded in 2009 and is based in Dallas.

Screens are the first thing guests see when they walk in. Cinergy uses them at the box office and concession stands for show times, trailers, special events, menus and promotions, and the content changes every week as new films open.

This case study was written with Canonical in 2017, when Cinergy had three sites and the player was called Screenly Pro. You can read the original PDF.

Where Apple TV stopped working

Cinergy's first centers ran their signage on Apple TVs. The hardware cost and the management work grew with every new site, and every content change had to go through the IT team. At busy times that held up flash sales and other fast promotions.

Nathan Hunstable, Cinergy's CTO, put the requirement simply: "What we needed was an alternative that was low cost, easy to manage and highly secure."

Why Cinergy picked Screenly

Cinergy looked at other signage products and found them too expensive or too awkward to run. Screenly fit for a few reasons:

• The Raspberry Pi based player was cheap, small and used little power, so installing one behind each screen was easy.
• Players cache content locally, which mattered because most of Cinergy's content is Full HD video. Caching saves bandwidth, and the screens keep playing through a network outage.
• Screenly had moved its players to Ubuntu Core in 2016. The OS and the Screenly software update separately and transactionally, so a failed update rolls back on its own and security fixes arrive faster.

"Obviously we really care about security," Hunstable said about the Ubuntu Core move.

Results

Cinergy rolled out 40 players with no major problems and planned another 70 for 2018.

Hunstable estimated the switch saved the company around $50,000, from cheaper hardware for each new site and less time spent running the devices. Once IT has set up a player, the marketing team manages content on its own and can get an on-the-fly special in front of guests within minutes.

For more on running Screenly in a cinema, see digital signage for cinemas.