Digital Signage Players

A digital signage player is a small form device (approx 4.5” x 4.5” x 1.5”) that gets connected to your display, digital sign or digital kiosk via HDMI. Installed on the digital signage player is the digital signage software. Digital signage players can either be updated via a USB stick or they can be connected to the internet to download updates from the “cloud”.

To download content from the internet, a digital signage player must be connected to the internet either through WiFi or hardware. The signage media player can be set to check for new updates every minute if a new update is received the old content is deleted and the new content is saved.

From a power and price standpoint Android, digital signage players are the most prevalent. This is due to the wide variety of players available online for purchase on sites like Amazon or Newegg. The second most popular form of digital signage players are Chrome OS devices. Chromebits are readily available and pricing for those come in at $90.

The Chromebit (also called “Chromestick”) is a decent entry level player that is good for displaying menu boards, images, scrolling tickers, news feed and other forms of basic media. If you are going to be playing motion graphics and multiple videos, Chromboxes are recommended.

Android digital signage player also known as Android TV boxes are compact little boxes that come with the Android system loaded. For running digital signage, we recommended going with an Android digital signage player that features a Quad Core Processor, 2GB/16GB memory. Anything less in specs may generate poor media playback.
If you are going to be buying online, make sure to read customer reviews. The main complaint we hear from customers that purchase low-cost devices is internet WiFi connectivity issues. To avoid this, we do suggest hardwiring the digital signage player to the internet.

Here is an easy and fast setup.

Chrome OS digital signage players are Chromebox, Chromebase, Chromebook and Chromebit. From a performance standpoint, Chromebox comes with much stronger specs than Chromebit. 4K resolutions, fast processors, external SD memory options, connect dual monitors, dual-band WiFi and more.

If you want to connect one digital signage player to multiple screens, you can, using an HDMI splitter (also called “switch”). Now keep in mind, all of the screens will be displaying the same content. To display unique content per screen, you would need one digital signage player per screen.

You will need display and digital signage software.

Connect the player to your TV via an HDMI cable. Once connected turn the TV on and get the digital signage player connected to the internet via WiFi or Ethernet cable. If you’re using an Android player, you can then download NoviSign digital signage app from the Google Play store. If you’re using a ChromeOS device, you can download NoviSign from the Chrome Web Store.

With NoviSign, all of the content saves onto the digital signage player. If the internet disconnects the content will keep playing (except YouTube and Ustream which needs to be online) everything from its cache. Once reconnected the digital signage player will download the newest updates. You will never experience a blue or black screen.

This depends on what kind of digital signage software you using to create the content with. At NoviSign, you can display anything combination of videos, images, scrolling text. YouTube, RSS feeds, weather forecasts, slideshows, websites, announcements, polls and more!

For situations that require several days of usage, you can use a simple USB thumb drive to display your images or slideshows. You could also connect a laptop to a TV and cycle through you PowerPoint slides.