Digital signage or a USB stick in the TV: what's the difference

A USB stick in the back of a TV plays the files on it in a loop, and that's about all it does. To change anything, somebody pulls the stick out, copies new files on at a laptop and plugs it back in. With digital signage you change the screen from a browser wherever you happen to be, it can switch content by time of day on its own, and you can see what it's showing without walking over to look. For one screen that hardly ever changes, a USB stick can be enough. Once you've got a couple of screens, or prices that move every week, it gets old quickly.

How the USB stick method usually goes

Most TVs made in the last ten years or so have a USB port and a basic media player built in. Load a stick with JPGs or MP4s, pick the slideshow option, and it'll cycle through them. It costs nothing extra, which is why it's such a common starting point.

The trouble shows up over the following weeks. Changing anything means a trip to the screen, and if the TV's on a high bracket above the bar, that's a stepladder job during opening hours with customers watching. With three screens you've got three sticks to keep in step, and sooner or later one of them still has the old prices on it.

Plenty of TVs won't pick the slideshow back up after a power cut. They come back on at the home screen or a "no signal" message and sit there until someone finds the remote and works through the menus again. The remote, of course, lives in a drawer nobody can quite remember.

There's no sense of time, either. The same loop plays at eight in the morning and ten at night, so the breakfast offer is still going round at last orders, and the Christmas menu hangs on into January unless somebody remembers to take it off the stick.

You also can't tell from anywhere else whether it's working. If the screen's been sat on a blue input screen since Tuesday, you'll find out the next time you walk past it.

What signage does differently

The screen gets a player (a small app on a stick, a box, a PC or the display itself) and the player takes its instructions from a website. In Casty that's the CMS at app.casty.co.uk.

You upload your files there once, then decide what plays on which screens and when. The player checks in regularly, downloads anything new and starts showing it at the right time. If you want a change on screen this minute, the Collect Now command tells an online screen to check in straight away.

Scheduling is where it pulls well ahead of a stick. You can set up dayparts for breakfast and lunch and have the menu change over at 11:30 every day. An event can run at weekends only, or on the third Thursday of every month for the quiz. Media can carry an expiry date, so the offer you uploaded on Monday drops out of the loop on the day it ends without you thinking about it.

With several screens, you make each change once. Put them in a display group (one per venue works well) and anything you schedule to the group plays on all of them. Change a price on a menu board and every screen showing that product updates.

You can check on things from the sofa, too. The Displays list shows each screen's last check-in, whether it has downloaded everything it needs and which layout it's playing, and you can request a screenshot to see the screen for yourself. After a power cut the player starts on its own and goes back to its schedule without anyone touching a remote.

What stays the same

You still need a screen and a socket, and someone still has to make the posters and menus. Files you made for the USB stick will usually upload as they are: JPG or PNG for pictures and MP4 for video, with H.264 being the video format that plays most reliably across players.

Offline playback carries over as well. A Casty player stores its content locally and keeps playing if the internet goes, so it copes with a dead router about as well as a USB stick does. Live content such as a web page needs the connection, but your uploaded images and videos keep going.

When a USB stick is enough

It comes down to how often the content changes. A single screen in a waiting area showing the same dozen photos of your venue, refreshed twice a year, doesn't need a schedule or remote access. Neither does a screen nobody will ever update. Signage won't fix that, though it does make the job quicker on the day someone finally gets round to it.

It tips over to signage when any of these are true:

• you've got more than one screen
• prices, offers or fixtures change weekly or more often
• you want different content at different times of day
• the screen's somewhere awkward to reach
• you run more than one site and can't be at each one

Moving from a stick to signage

You can usually keep the TV. Unplug the USB stick, plug a player into the HDMI port (an Amazon Signage Stick or an Android media player is the simple option) and power it from the wall. The first time the player starts, it shows a short code. You type that into Add Display in the CMS, then we approve the screen and add it to your account. Upload the files you were already using, put them in a layout or a playlist, schedule them, and the screen picks them up at its next check-in.

The devices page lists every supported player, and choosing a media player explains which suits which screen. If you're wondering what to set aside for it all, budgeting for digital signage lists every cost. The quick start guide shows the whole route from a picture to a screen.