Lisa Schneider & Travis McMahand, Videotel

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

There are not a lot of companies that have been involved in what we now call digital signage for 44 years, but Videotel has been selling technology that puts marketing information on screens since 1980.

The company started with VCRs (younger readers may have to Google that) and then started designing, manufacturing and selling DVD players that, unlike consumer devices, would happily play out a set of repeating video files for weeks, months and years. Back in the days before fast internet connections, cloud computing and small form factor PCs, that's how a lot of what we now know as digital signage was done.

About 14 years ago, the San Diego-area company added dedicated, solid state digital signage media players - and that product line has steadily grown to include networked and interactive versions. The company also now has interactive accessories for stuff like lift and learn, and directional speakers that help drive experiences in everything from retail to museums.

I had a good conversation with Lisa Schneider, who runs sales and marketing, and Travis McMahand, Videotel's CTO. We get into the company's roots, the evolution to solid state media players, and how Videotel successfully competes with $400 and higher players, when at least part of the buyer market seems driven mostly by finding devices that are less than $100.

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TRANSCRIPT

Thank you for joining me. Can you introduce yourselves and tell me what Videotel is all about? 

Lisa Schneider: Yes, absolutely. Hello, Dave. Thank you for having both Travis and me today. We appreciate it. My name is Lisa Schneider and I am the executive vice president for sales and marketing for our company, Videotel Digital.

We were founded in 1980. Gosh, it's been almost 44 years now, back when we were manufacturing top-loading VCRs, that went into industrial-grade DVD players, and now in the last 14 years, we are manufacturing digital signage media players. We have interactive solutions that include various sensors like motion sensors, proximity sensors, and weight sensors. We've got mechanical LED push buttons and touchless IR buttons and RFID tags, and things like that that create interactive displays. We also provide directional audio speakers. We have various form factors for all types of projects, and then we also have Travis on the line with us. I'll let Travis introduce himself. 

Travis McMahand: Oh, hi, I'm Travis McMahand I am the CTO of Videotel Digital. 

Where's the company based? Is it in San Diego? 

Lisa Schneider: Yes, we are in, it's San Diego. It's actually Chula Vista, borderline San Diego. So in California. 

San Diego area. 

Lisa Schneider: Yes, San Diego area. Beautiful San Diego. 

So I've been aware of your company forever and going all the way back to the days when you were doing industrial grade, commercially oriented DVD players. In the early days of digital science before things were networked, that's what people were using and if you used a regular DVD player or even a VCR or something like that, the thing was really not set up to play over and over again if you were using just like a consumer-grade device.

So the whole idea was you were, you guys developed commercial-grade versions that were rated to last, for days, weeks, months, years. Is that accurate? 

Lisa Schneider: Yes, that is accurate, and it was, that was our flagship product back in the day. That was because we made a truly industrial-grade player and it would auto power on, auto seamlessly loop and repeat without any manual interaction, even without a remote. So it was a looping player. 

We actually still have three different types of industrial-grade DVD players that we still offer. They're actually really popular in healthcare facilities because they are specifically UL-approved for medical DVD players still, and they are still out there and, we are still producing them. 

The attraction for that at the time was that just the absence of really networked media players unless you were quite sophisticated and were using big box PCs and everything else, I assume that market with the exception of what you’re saying about Hospitals is largely gone away?

Lisa Schneider: It hasn't been, for example, like sometimes with waiting rooms, people are still using DVDs for movies, for entertainment purposes, not just in healthcare. Sometimes there are still people who are self-burned content for museums. It's just simple for them to just throw the disc in and then they wal