Messages

1

New features and suggestions / Re: Local time of the machine in station view.

« on: March 07, 2014, 12:47:30 AM »

Moving players around the country is a common occurrence with our business model, too – and likewise we rarely physically touch them from day-to-day. Yes the devices use a time server to get the current time (for clarity, my point of reference is the MediaDroids.) however 'local time' is especially problematic when moving players across UK and Europe where there are multiple timezones. Players appear 'out of sync' as they have been set up as UK/GMT but have been moved to France, Germany etc. Not knowing what time the players think they are on can be an issue when trying to remotely diagnose, of sure.

2

Enterprise edition, branding and reselling / Re: Thoughts about Ryarc and Scala

« on: January 23, 2014, 07:39:21 AM »

@KRC2013 it really depends what your Digital Signage needs are; features, support, warranties.

The benefit of Mediasignage is the low cost of entry/monthly costs, however unless you are in the US it's worth considering the support you require and the potential size of your digital signage network. Based outside of the US it is almost solely via live chat (which is pretty good I must say) or email. If you're sourcing hardware (players) then from my experience and from reading the forum, the most stable players are those supplied by Mediasignage - which only ship from the US, so bear in mind freight time, import taxes (and returns of faulty hardware in rare instances) etc.

Sorry I've not really given you an answer, but a few paths to consider when you're evaluating what DS platform to choose.

3

New features and suggestions / Re-ordering/organising the list of timelines

« on: December 12, 2013, 03:55:53 AM »

Hi, we have a campaign with approx. 15+ timelines (mostly assigned to different outputs). What would be great is if there was a way to do-order/group/organise the list of timelines in the editor to make things a little easier to manage.

Sorry if this is a duplicate topic (and feel free to point us to an existing discussion if this has been bought up) – we did a quick search for this feature request but could't find anything initially.

4

mediaPLAYERS, Hardware and accessories / Re: Content downloading in background feature

« on: December 02, 2013, 06:29:46 AM »

Being able to set a scheduled update time per device might be a sensible way to do this? i.e. at 9am a Station is set to check for updates.

This would put the Station in a 'maintenance state' that downloads new content to the mediaDROID/mediaBOX. Whilst the content update is in progress, perhaps we could specify a simple timeline/channel to play during the update (content would be need to be pre-cached or loaded before all of the other content).

We could override a scheduled update as per the usual (update station) command. Non-intensive data updates would still need to occur at fixed intervals (e.g. XML, RSS etc. – I believe that we can set these at a component level already).

Where this feature would be really useful is:
1/ In situations where a we need to deploy a screen but have agreed to update at specified times of the day (to not disrupt the network for sales critical functions). Knowing the player would only be checking for updates at specified intervals would be good.
2/ In situations where we need to push updates to the screen (e.g. at the end of our working day) but we do not want to disturb the Station playing - many shops open until 8 or 9pm but we push updates at 6pm (currently we rely on Stations being power cycled overnight in order to get new updates the next day)

5

New features and suggestions / Re: Feature: Multiple Sequences

« on: November 22, 2013, 07:33:21 AM »

Ah! Outputs may just be the solution! Thanks @Anoop we will take a look at that.

6

New features and suggestions / Re: Local time of the machine in station view.

« on: November 21, 2013, 09:31:35 AM »

I can see how this feature would help diagnosing issues remotely. +1 my vote if this is simple to add.

Being able to psuedo update a stations time would be a nice feature (i.e. Station time -2hrs) – mainly when testing sequenced content. At present we either have to update the station's internal clock, change the sequencer order (time consuming if complex orders) or be patient.

7

New features and suggestions / Re: Mobile app to control stations

« on: November 21, 2013, 09:26:00 AM »

Nice. Thanks admin!

Re: station view/station status – is there a log kept of station activity? Is there a way we can monitor/download a report to show online/offline status for a particular station/set of stations?

Thx

8

New features and suggestions / Feature: Multiple Sequences

« on: November 21, 2013, 09:24:33 AM »

Just thought I'd throw this into the can as it's something that's arisen internally from a conversation/likely scenario that will arise for us shortly.

We are running campaigns on a number of screens (many use the same campaign) – these are utilising the sequence feature. Screens are naturally assigned a campaign and play by the schedule as expected. But what, for instance if we wanted to A/B alternative content (timelines) in a selected number of locations (perhaps a different offer, running a certain promo at different times of the day etc.). Having the ability to create multiple sequences for a campaign and assign different screens with different sequences could open up some nice opportunities.

This would also offer the advantage of being able to create one campaign (read: managing one group of timelines and their content) and tweak what timelines run on different screens. Say for example we have a location with a specific event coming up that we wish to promote, we could temporarily assign a specially created sequence for that screen.

I know this would mean that you would have to assign a station with a campaign and also a sequence, but it would create some nice opportunities for trialing campaigns in certain locations.

Or... is anyone else out there managing to achieve this without duplicating campaigns – is there something we've missed?

MB

9

New features and suggestions / Re: Ability to choose multiple stations to refresh/reboot/etc

« on: November 21, 2013, 07:33:20 AM »

+1. Nice request. Using the campaign filter in the UI (sidebar) would allow us to narrow down the stations we need to update, but a multiple select/checkbox to send commands would be a great addition.

10

New features and suggestions / Re: Mobile app to control stations

« on: November 21, 2013, 07:30:19 AM »

Will station view features be available in StudioLite/the SDK? Would Enterprise users essentially be able to roll out their own version of Station View?

11

New features and suggestions / Re: Transition between Timelines in a Sequence

« on: November 21, 2013, 07:29:00 AM »

Subtle, but nice update – makes the end-user experience sleeker.

Just thought I'd straw-poll before considering deploying this to a live environment with many mediaDROIDs. Has anyone had any positive/negative experiences using timeline transitions with the mediaDROID series (85). Do they use hardware acceleration for transitions. Any issues when transitioning whilst playing videos etc.?

Would be nice to deploy transitions but we've been a bit conservative with how far we push the devices to date (that said we're doing some pretty nice multi-zone stuff with it using a range of video and bitmap and QR content).

12

New features and suggestions / Re: Automatically create thumbnails of graphic files

« on: November 21, 2013, 04:32:21 AM »

+1 for this feature, would be very welcome.

For the few items we've manually thumbnailed it's made the UI more easy to manage (esp. when the media item name doesn't display on the timeline when the duration is short)

MB

13

Report bugs and errors / Re: Events not copied when timline is duplicated

« on: November 21, 2013, 01:39:40 AM »

Excellent. Thanks for addressing.

14

Enterprise edition, branding and reselling / Re: API, SDK availability and Development environment support

« on: November 21, 2013, 01:37:33 AM »

Game changer you say? You tease us!

Looking forward to the fruits of your efforts.

Cheers, MB

15

Report bugs and errors / Re: Auto Rewind for video objects

« on: November 21, 2013, 01:36:16 AM »

Hi admin,

Thanks for getting back to me. Timeline > selected Video > properties is where we normally change it, but it's a discipline to remember to select and uncheck the box.

Can't seem to see the option within Channel > properties – it only displays the following properties: name, color, random order, repeat to fit, respect content length. That would be easier if we could manage on a channel level. Am I missing something?

MB