Screenly Expands Digital Signage Hardware Options Beyond Raspberry Pis

March 1, 2022 by Dave Haynes

The CMS software firm Screenly has built up its business, partnerships and platform through the years around the use of ultra low-cost Raspberry Pi mini PCs. But to meet some end-user demands for more processing power, the company has now added support for an Intel-based media player.

From day one at Screenly, says the company in a marketing email this morning, we have supported Raspberry Pi digital signage players. This system-on-a-chip device is compact and works well for most use cases. However, some customers require a more powerful digital signage player to handle more complex content, such as heavy dashboards.

We will, of course, continue to support our fleet of thousands of Raspberry Pi-based Screenly Players.

With our new Intel-based Screenly Player, users can now display video content in beautiful 4K resolution without distracting frame dropping. Additionally, users can display heavy web pages such as PowerBi dashboards and web pages with data-intensive animations. This power, combined with our new website automation feature mentioned above, gives Screenly superpowers.

This makes sense. Companies like Screenly and Silver Curve have shown that the teeny Pi micro PCs can do a lot for a little, but just as system on chip smart displays have the built-in processing power to meet many to most digital signage needs, Pis have their limits. It’s hard to walk away from opportunities if the objection is not the software but the limitations of the hardware.