Screens

A screen is one television, and this is the most detailed form in the product — because a screen is the thing that has to be described accurately for everything else to work.

Pairing a television#

Open cms.screenroll.live/tv on the television, or launch the app. It shows a six-character code and a QR, valid for 24 hours. Then either scan the QR with your phone, or type the code into Link TV on this page.

Why it existsThe code is shown by the television rather than typed into it, because a screen in a shop window has no keyboard and often no remote worth using. The 24-hour life exists so you can give an installer a code the evening before they visit.

Note

Pairing survives a power cut. The player remembers which screen it is, so a television that loses power at 3am comes back playing rather than showing a pairing code to a shop full of people.

The panel itself#

Resolution is reported by the television, so you do not measure anything. Orientation you set: Portrait tells the player to rotate its own canvas, which matters on the many devices that cannot rotate their output themselves.

Screens → Create screen

Screen name *1

Westfield — Entrance TV

Location *2

Westfield London — Main entrance

Orientation

Landscape

Monitors3

Monitor connection4

Multi-URL / Devices

Layout

Full Screen

1The name your team will use. “Entrance TV”, not “Screen 3”.

2Which place it is in. Searchable, because networks get long.

3How many physical panels this one screen spans.

4How those panels are driven — see below.

Video walls#

A screen can span several physical panels. How they are driven changes everything about how sync works, so the form asks:

Multi-URL / Devices — each panel is its own device with its own browser or app. Playback starts only when every panel has checked in, so the wall starts together rather than staggered. A panel that is unplugged holds the others in a waiting state, which is visible on the screen itself and on this page.
HDMI Split — one device drives all the panels through a splitter or a multi-output card. Sync is physical, so there is nothing to coordinate.

Careful

On a Multi-URL wall, sound plays on one panel only — otherwise four panels play the same track a fraction apart and it sounds like an echo. Which panel carries it is decided automatically, and if that one drops, another takes over. The sound is wrong has the detail.

Audience — what an impression is worth#

This is what turns a play into an impression, and what programmatic buyers price against. Two ways to answer:

Hourly average — one number: roughly how many people pass in a typical hour. The same figure is used for every playback whatever the time or day. Quick, honest enough for most networks.
Detailed — impressions per playback, entered per hour and per day of the week. More work, and what a serious buyer will pay more for, because a Tuesday at 04:00 is not a Saturday at 14:00.

There is also an optional auto-update from URL: if you have a people-counter or a footfall feed, give it the address and how often to read it, in hours, and the figure keeps itself current.

Example — Why the two methods differ in price

A gym screen with an hourly average of 40 reports the same 40 at 06:00 and at 19:00. The detailed version reports 12 at 06:00 and 95 at 19:00. A buyer targeting after-work audiences will pay for the second and ignore the first, because the first cannot prove the evening is worth more.

Sound, hours and diagnostics#

Audio enabled — the screen's own mute switch. When it is off the platform does not even send the audio content to that screen, which is a stronger guarantee than muting it on arrival. A gym that pipes its own music wants this off.
Operating hours and days — outside them the screen shows nothing and reports nothing. This is not the same as a schedule's time window: this is the panel's own working day.
Diagnostics overlay — draws an instrument panel over the content on that screen. Leave it off in public; switch it on when something is wrong. See Reading the diagnostics panel.

What the list tells you#

Screens → list view

ScreenPlaysFillSyncCached

Westfield — Entrance TV2,14068%2m ago12/121

Manchester — Café1,90461%2m ago9/122

Old Street — Window0—4d ago0/12

1When the screen last checked in and whether it is in sync with the others in its wall.

2How much of what it has been told to play is already on its own disk.

A screen with an old sync time and nothing cached has never really been working. A screen with a recent sync and a partial cache is fine today and will go dark in an outage — that column is the difference between the two.