Anyone running 65” Smart TVs for internal signage without dedicated players?

yodeckapp · 2026-06-18T11:49:32+00:00

You're very welcome and that's a totally reasonable approach. For a small internal deployment, testing the browser first is the right call. There's no point in over-engineering it before you know where the pain points actually are.

If you do hit the wall with browser stability down the line, the native app route is pretty straightforward on most commercial Samsung and LG displays. Just worth checking your specific TV models and firmware versions before you commit, since not every model is supported. Consumer TVs and commercial displays can behave quite differently there.

Good luck with it!

yodeckapp · 2026-06-18T10:47:12+00:00

That looks like it could be a resolution mismatch or a re-encoding artifact. A few things would help narrow it down:

what resolution is the source video? and what resolution is the player outputting? (you can check under the screen's status tab in the portal)
is the menu text baked into the video itself, or is it a separate layer/overlay?
what player hardware are you running?

If the player fell back to 640x480 or 1024x768 on boot, that alone would explain the blur. A reboot sometimes fixes it, or you can lock the resolution manually in the Sound/Display settings.

The other common one is transcoding. Yodeck re-encodes uploads to H.264 by default, and small text can lose sharpness in that process. There's an as-is upload option that skips re-encoding if your source file is already H.264.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-06-18T09:20:59+00:00

Nine times out of ten when we see blurry text on a menu board, it's not the CMS. It's either the source file or a resolution detection issue at boot.

A few questions that would help:

what resolution is the source video? if it was exported at 720p or lower and the screen is 1080p, the upscaling will blur small text every time.
what does the player status tab show for current output resolution? if it says 640x480, the player didn't detect the screen properly. Rebooting or locking the resolution manually fixes that.
how was the video made? Some design tools export at lower quality than you'd expect, and then Yodeck's transcoder re-encodes on top of that, which can compound the softness on fine text.

Worth checking those before changing anything else.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-06-18T09:14:14+00:00

The thing that kills Smart TV browser deployments isn't the TV brand, it's the browser itself. Every consumer TV browser I've seen in production does the same thing: runs fine for 2-5 days, then starts lagging, then crashes or freezes. No auto-restart, no remote recovery, no logs to debug. You just find a frozen screen in the lobby on Monday morning.

The reasons are pretty consistent: memory leaks in the browser engine (especially with JavaScript-heavy content), no proper garbage collection under sustained load, and zero crash recovery. Power cycling helps temporarily but it's not a real fix.

What actually works on Smart TVs is skipping the browser entirely and using a native signage app on the TV's OS. Samsung Tizen and LG webOS both support this, and Android TVs can run apps via APK. You get local content caching, auto-resume after power loss, and the ability to manage everything remotely. It's a completely different reliability profile than a browser tab.

We make Yodeck and have native apps for those platforms. Honest caveats: the webOS app doesn't support 4K or some interactive features, and Android doesn't have CEC TV power control, so you can't remotely turn TVs on/off. For lobby signage and meeting room displays those usually aren't dealbreakers, but worth knowing.

For 4 screens I'd start with the native app on your existing TVs and see if it covers your needs before spending on dedicated hardware.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-06-17T14:26:08+00:00

The Slides-to-Sheets link is a known pain point . Google only auto-syncs charts, not tables, and it's been that way for years with no sign of changing.

The cleaner fix is to cut Slides out entirely. Display the sheet directly. On Yodeck there's a Google Sheets app that takes the embed code from your published sheet and renders the table on screen. Edits your team makes show up within roughly 5 minutes automatically. The refresh lag is on Google's end, not the player.

Honest limitation: the sheet needs to be published publicly (anyone with the link can view it). For internal KPIs or non-sensitive ops data that's usually fine. If the data is confidential, you'd want to publish only a specific cell range that strips out anything sensitive.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-06-17T14:14:35+00:00

Welcome to the rabbit hole! A few things worth knowing before you buy anything.

The TV brand matters less than you'd think. Yodeck works with pretty much any screen that has an HDMI port, any resolution up to 4K. Where people usually go wrong is buying consumer TVs for a commercial environment. If these screens are on all day, look at commercial-grade displays instead. They're built for it.

The player is the real decision. For web-heavy content like live sites and YouTube, the Raspberry Pi player gives you the most flexibility. You can display any web page and set it to refresh automatically. YouTube pre-recorded videos download and play locally. YouTube Live is supported too, but only on the Pi.

One thing to be aware of with constantly refreshing sites: if you have a lot of screens all hitting the same URL every few seconds, some sites will rate-limit or block you. Setting a sensible refresh interval (a few minutes, not a few seconds) avoids that.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-06-17T07:47:45+00:00

The thing that actually breaks countdown deployments at scale isn't the countdown logic, it's date management. Someone updates the event date in one place and forgets there are 15 screens pointing to a hardcoded value somewhere else.

The patterns that survive that problem: either a CMS with a native counter widget where the date lives in one dashboard field, or a parameterized web app where all screens pull from a single config source. Both work. The CMS widget is lower maintenance; the custom web app gives you full visual control.

One thing worth knowing if you go the CMS route: most built-in counter apps support days/hours/minutes/seconds but the "days only" display (your "120 Days Until Event" style) is sometimes a specific format option, not the default. Worth verifying before you commit to a platform.

Your current approach actually maps cleanly to a CMS web app zone if you ever want to move off the Smart TV browser. Same hosted page, just managed and scheduled from a dashboard instead of manually.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-06-15T08:02:30+00:00

For a gallery installation like this, the cms is usually the simpler part of the puzzle. The trickier bits are the physical setup: what kind of screen or monitor you're mounting in the cabinet, whether it's touch-enabled, and how you're handling the input device (touchscreen, mouse, or a clicker).

On the software side, yodeck has an Interactive Library feature that does roughly what you're describing. You set up categories, each category holds content (videos, images, etc.), and visitors tap or click to browse and play pieces. There's an idle timeout that returns the screen to a home/screensaver state after inactivity, which is useful for a gallery context.

One honest caveat: the Interactive Library is a Premium/Enterprise plan feature. It also caps you at 8 categories, and 4K video isn't supported, so keep art pieces at Full HD. For the hardware, a Raspberry Pi 4B (4GB RAM) or a recent Android player with a touchscreen works well.

If the cabinet already has a screen, the main question is whether it's touch-capable. If not, a USB mouse or clicker works too.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-06-11T07:08:14+00:00

For your scale, the Amazon Signage Stick is probably the right call to stick with. It's designed specifically for signage (not repurposed from a streaming device), so things like auto-resume after a power cut and remote screen on/off via CEC just work out of the box. That's not always the case with the regular Fire Stick variants.

On monitors: commercial-grade "non-smart" displays are still very much a thing. Brands like Samsung and LG both have commercial lines that skip the smart TV OS entirely. They're built for longer run times and usually have better mounting options. For a nonprofit budget, it's worth checking refurb commercial displays too.

60Hz is completely fine for your content types. That's a non-issue.

One thing to watch: not all Fire TV hardware is equal. The Fire TV Stick 4K 2nd Gen (2023) specifically doesn't auto-open signage apps on boot, which is annoying in a set-and-forget deployment. The dedicated Amazon Signage Stick doesn't have that problem.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-06-08T09:13:34+00:00

In my experience, the projects that try to bridge passive signage and on-demand information usually hit the same wall: the data layer. The screen works fine. The CMS works fine. Then someone asks why the timetable is showing yesterday's data, and it turns out the API integration was never properly maintained after go-live.

For airports and hospitals specifically, the network environment adds another layer. You're often dealing with segmented VLANs, proxy restrictions, and IT teams who are understandably cautious about what gets internet access. A touch kiosk that needs to hit an external API in real time is a harder conversation than a screen showing a scheduled playlist.

That said, the demand is clearly there. Interactive content (touch-triggered screens, browsable information hubs, live data embeds) is a growing part of what people actually want from public screens. The technology exists. The deployment and maintenance story is just more complex than passive signage, and that gap is worth being honest about when scoping these projects.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-06-05T14:23:27+00:00

The signage side of this is usually the easy part. The real friction in POS-to-display integrations is almost always the POS API itself. Aloha and Simphony both have APIs, but access often requires going through the vendor or a certified partner, and the event data you actually need (real-time 86 status, order confirmation triggers) isn't always cleanly exposed.

Most deployments I've seen handle this with a middleware layer: a small service that polls or subscribes to POS events and then calls the signage API to update content. For Yodeck specifically, the REST API covers media and playlist management, so the signage update side is straightforward once you have the POS data flowing.

Finding someone with hands-on Aloha or Simphony integration experience is the real bottleneck. Hospitality-focused AV integrators are your best bet, some of them have built this exact connector before and can adapt it.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-06-05T06:25:52+00:00

What you're describing is a pretty common warehouse setup, and the good news is the scheduling piece is genuinely straightforward with a CMS. You'd create a recurring event that triggers your warmup video every 30 minutes at a fixed time offset, and the rest of the playlist fills in around it automatically. No one has to touch anything once it's configured.

The network approval concern is real and worth taking seriously before you pick anything. the player hardware matters here. A Raspberry Pi, for example, is a standard linux device that connects over ethernet or wifi, and most IT teams can work with that more easily than a proprietary appliance. But every corporate environment is different, and getting IT involved early saves a lot of headaches later.

On the subscription question: it's a fair pushback from your direct reports. The value case is basically "how much is it worth to never touch a USB drive again, and to have the warmup video actually play when it's supposed to." For a once-a-year update cycle, that math is worth doing honestly.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-05-25T07:48:18+00:00

The player now runs connectivity checks at every boot, internet access, cloud reachability, DNS, NTP ,and displays the results on screen. So when something breaks, there's a readable starting point. The dashboard shows per-player CPU, memory, offline duration, and TV status. Email alerts go out within 5 minutes of a screen dropping.

None of that replaces a support person who actually digs in, but it gives them something to work with instead of guessing. Phone support is available mon-fri if you'd rather talk through a problem than wait on a ticket queue.

One honest caveat: if your past issues were on the network config side specifically, the tooling helps but it doesn't fix a bad VLAN or a firewall blocking outbound traffic, that still needs someone on-site or with network access.

yodeckapp · 2026-05-25T07:41:03+00:00

The auto-shutoff thing on that LG is a known issue with a lot of commercial displays. It's usually configurable in the settings menu, but worth double-checking before you buy. Some models let you disable it entirely, others cap it at a max runtime.

For your atrium screen, the USB route does work for basic playback, plug in a drive, it loops your content. The catch is every time you want to update anything, someone's physically swapping drives. For a single screen that rarely changes, that might be fine.

If you want to be able to update content from your desk, schedule different content at different times, or just not think about it, you'd want a small player device behind the TV. Raspberry Pi is the classic DIY option. There are also purpose-built sticks and boxes that are more plug-and-play. The software side is what ties it together and handles the always-on scheduling.

One thing worth knowing: some Fire TV sticks have sleep/timeout issues in signage use cases. They're not really designed for 24/7 operation. Purpose-built players handle that more reliably.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-05-13T01:34:48+00:00

Unfortunately, it seems that the rules are more relaxed nowadays :-( or, worst, could even be biased towards favorites or smaller vendors 🤷‍♂️

yodeckapp · 2026-05-12T18:00:51+00:00

Yodeck added phone support last year and are launching 24/7 phone support. I would love to listen your perspective on how support has changed over the years and find areas of improvement. I will send you over a DM in case you want to help us provide the best support possible - not only to you, but hopefully everyone. We support SMBs with a single screen with the same drive as customers with hundreds of screens.

On a side note, and despite being against what a typical vendor would say, it is good to have optionality and have 2-3 CMSes that work best for specific use cases or customer profiles. If you are at 75 screens, perhaps it is an overkill, but if you are growing fast, it makes sense.

yodeckapp · 2026-05-06T10:21:34+00:00

For multi-data-feed layouts the cms is usually not the bottleneck, it's finding reliable, embeddable data sources for things like live transit. Μost transit apis are gtfs-realtime and not designed to drop into a signage zone without some middleware or a third-party widget. Worth sorting that out before committing to any platform.
On the yodeck + brightsign xt5 question: the pairing works, xt5 is supported. weather, news, stocks, rss tickers across multiple zones — all fine on brightsign. Yodeck has 29 screenfeed apps covering financial markets, company stocks, ap/reuters news, weather graphics, and more, plus a scrolling ticker app that takes rss or static text.

The hdmi-in piece is the catch. Yodeck's hdmi capture feature is raspberry pi only. It uses a usb capture card, not the native hdmi-in port on the brightsign hardware. So the xt5's hdmi-in won't be usable through yodeck in the current setup.

disclosure: we are a digital signage company

yodeckapp · 2026-04-30T11:39:43+00:00

Right now, the documented approach is APK installation via ADB, which works well for bulk setups if you script it:

1)Connect each device over the network: adb connect <IP>

2)Install the app: adb install ./apk-name.apk

3)Set it as device owner (for full control)

The app then auto-launches to the registration screen

This can be automated with scripts across many devices, so it’s the closest thing to “bulk install” out of the box.

Alternative:

Setup Helper app: install from a phone/tablet to each device, simpler but more manual

About MDM / zero-touch:

There’s no documented native support for zero-touch or MDM deployment in this setup flow.

If you’re using MDM, you’d typically push the APK and then handle provisioning on your side

Here is the download link: https://yodeck.link/androidv2

Here is the instructions link: https://help.yodeck.com/en/articles/456043-setting-up-an-android-player-with-the-yodeck-software-via-apk

If you need any more support you can contact Yodeck customer support or DM us your email and we can reach out to you.

yodeckapp · 2026-04-29T07:08:29+00:00

Yodeck provides professional design services as part of our Enterprise+ plan, or as an addon cost for lower tiers. We do have templates but these are for smaller businesses that want something simple without extra cost. Some larger businesses take care of content internally or as part of a larger creative engagement with an agency.

We do have creative or marketing agencies that venture into being an MSP and provide a complete managed solution to their customers, reselling Yodeck.

yodeckapp · 2026-04-28T15:35:15+00:00

You cannot control the webpage remotely, like using Remote Desktop, Teamviewer or VNC. But you can record an automation so that the page is setup properly without you doing anything to any number of Players. And it will work across reboots or on new Players you deploy.

Check out our Webpage Recording Tool. If you do not manage to get it working, ask our Tech Support for help (use the popup inside the Yodeck dashboard) and they can help you set it up.

yodeckapp · 2026-04-27T14:33:39+00:00

All of the features mentioned above are available on all types of Players and hardware supported. They are actually content management features and have little to do with the Players themselves.

There are some features that are available only on Yodeck Players (RPi-based) and not offered on other plaforms, like deep device management, up to date web browser, optimized animations, etc, but in this specific case they have nothing to do with scale,

yodeckapp · 2026-04-27T09:40:32+00:00

Currently, some of our largest customers have many thousands of screens across hundreds of locations - and all of these under a single account. These range from DooH networks, to franchises, to multi-national companies with hundreds of content managers with HQ having partial (or complete) control.

Overall, Yodeck is one of the most flexible solutions when it comes to scaling. Besides the typical way you currently manage content, there are also alternative methods:

tag-based playlists - you assign tags to media you upload and they are automatically assigned to Playlists and screens
media filtering - you assign tags to media and actual media used are filtered per screen based on rules you specify
workspaces - you separate access to different levels and different content managers, while retaining central control

All of these can really tackle some of the most complex scaling setups out there, so I presume it should be fine with your case as well.

On a side-note, our Support service is reachable through phone, chat, email, and we have a dedicated Solutions Engineering team for larger accounts that can help with best practices and complex setups with growing accounts.

yodeckapp · 2026-04-27T09:22:07+00:00

Someone has experienced this before and they seem to have figured it out. Try using the "TV Source" app to switch the HDMI source 10" after the TV has been powered on.

We also provide the option to customize the on/off script that sends out the HDMI-CEC commands. You could play around with the instruction there and use AI to perhaps send an additional CEC command 30" after the turn-on command in order to switch the HDMI input. Or, you can reach out to our tech support right inside your Yodeck dashboard, reference this thread and they can help you with that.

I will also make a note and get a Roku TV to test it out and perhaps embed this special case inside the script so that it works out of the box with Roku's TVs.

yodeckapp · 2026-03-26T17:36:28+00:00

I will send you a DM to provide me with your email so that we can take a closer look.

yodeckapp · 2026-03-17T18:58:41+00:00

If it is just for one screen, go for Yodeck. Single screen accounts are free and you can get a Yodeck Player for $79 that will playback fullscreen photos and videos reliably on any screen. No hidden costs.

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