Generic Android Players
OnSign TV can truly work can work on any Android 4.4 or above device.
Why NOT to use a Generic Player
OnSign TV can truly work can work on any Android 4.4 or above devie.
That said, we highly recommend choosing one of the pre-certified devices. These are tested and proven to be reliable under professional operation requirements. We have direct support by most listed manufacturers so we can work together whenever an issue comes up.
Choosing a different Android device is possible, but it is important for you to thoroughly test the device ensuring it is stable and can execute your content accordingly.
Before giving you some hints about how to perform the test, here are some issues and pitfalls we see on generic Android players:
Non compliant Android firmware – Many generic Android manufactures alter the Android structure and APIs. This will affect stability and software compatibility.
Low quality hardware – Using low-quality components or assembly process will make your hardware unstable.
Heat issues – Several low quality devices don’t have adequate heat-sinking and will crash the device whenever temperature gets too high.
Low quality power supply – We have seen several players that are sold with an underpowered power supply. This will crash the device whenever more CPU is required and more current is drained from the power supply.
Availability – Generic hardware devices come and go every day. This means the device you are buying today will likely not be available for purchasing a couple months down the road.
Variation – When purchasing a generic device you will see very similar boxes sold by different brands. The reality is each box may look the same, but they can be completely different. Even same models purchased on the same batch often comes with different firmware and software bundles pre-installed.
Low WiFi performance – Very often we see generic devices having problems to sustain a reliable WiFi connection. This can lead to download problems and making your devices to get off-line.
No RTC Battery – Professional devices feature a small battery, so the device will not lose date and time. Devices that don’t have an RTC battery will present the wrong date and time at boot. With the time off, the device will not present the scheduled content correctly and will also affect content playback reporting.
Portrait mode- Professional Android players support hardware screen orientation setting so content can be presented in landscape or portrait mode.
Testing a Generic Android Player
First install and pair OnSign TV player to your account
If your device is not rooted, make sure you instal the OnSign TV SPM software to enable the OnSign TV advanced features. Without the OnSign TV advanced features you will not be able to remote update your devices nor take advantage of remote view. We don’t recommend using a device that don’t support OnSign TV Advanced features.
Create your campaigns using the same layout you plan using on a real operation, same videos, same images, same apps, etc
Disable the player scheduled reboot, so you can track if any crash happens.
Publish the content to the player:
- Take a close look to ensure the content is presented as expected
- Make sure the player is not restarting for unknown reasons
- Make sure the player WiFi connectivity is stable
Test the player for at least 5 days:
- Go to the player Status pager:
- Check if any errors happened.
- Look for unscheduled player reboots.
- Make sure the player is not getting too hot
