Android devices are devices such as Smart TV with Android TV, Google ChromeCast, Amazon Fire TV, FireSticks devices and OptiSigns Android Sticks are good options for regular digital signage uses. It is low cost, small form factor or built-in TVs hence can be installed easily without drilling holes, and the Android system is user friendly too.
However, these devices are not powerful devices, generally with 1-2GB of RAM, and Android TV is mainly designed to run streaming contents at full screen for a few hours a day, if you are playing heavy contents for extended time, you may experience performance and stability issues.
Heavy content is usually when your screen has more than 3 SplitScreen zones with each zone playing content heavy contents such as:
- Videos
- Youtube, Vimeo or other streaming videos
- Website content (yes, modern website are quite heavy, just check how much memory your Chrome browser is consuming)
- Dashboards (PowerBI, Lookers, etc.)
- App such as Social Media, News feeds, etc.
Typical performance issues can be that the media may be lagging or sometimes the screen may freeze. If you are also leaving the devices powered on all the time and running 24x7 with those heavy contents, it may eventually lead to Android system crash, hence a factory reset is required to get it back running.
Best Practice
To make your Android TV devices running stable and smooth, we recommend you follow the suggested best practice below.
- Using the power adapter supplied with the device instead of the TV USB port. This will ensure that the device can draw enough power to play the heavy contents.
- Limit the number of SplitScreen zones used on the Android TV devices, for best performance and stability, we recommend not go beyond more than 3 zones. If you are using designer app, be aware that each widget will be count as a separate zone.
- Keep your devices powered on and running no more than 16 hours/day. OptiSigns allows you to use operational schedule to control the device running time.
- Avoid put heavy contents in more than one zone, such as videos, youtube, dashboards like PowerBI, or some other heavy website. For example, if you have a video playlist assigned to one zone, and in another zone there are dashboards or youtube videos, it will be more likely to cause stability/performance issue.
- Make sure that your devices have enough local storage to cache the contents from your playlist.
Recommendation
Android TV devices are not rated as commercial grade hardware, and are normally not very powerful. If your use cases require 3+ more zones, multiple heavy content at a time, or keep your digital signage contents running 24x7. Please consider using professional grade devices, such as the OptiSigns Pro Player or other windows, Linux devices that more powerful and industrial/commercial grade rated. These devices are more robust hardware which are built to handle heavy content and can be played continuously for longer duration.