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Signage engineering, written down

How XMDS actually works, why video walls drift, what to demand from a licensing model: the things we wish someone had written down before we had to work them out.

Product · 4 min read

Xibo® vs BrightSign® isn't a choice: it's a stack

Search "Xibo vs BrightSign" and you'll find comparison after comparison, almost all answering the wrong question. They aren't rivals; they're two layers of one stack.

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Engineering

How XMDS works: the protocol behind every Xibo® display

Every Xibo® display speaks XMDS. Understanding its lifecycle (register, authorize, collect, play, report) explains almost every signage problem you'll ever debug.

4 min read
Hardware

Consumer Android boxes vs solid-state players for Xibo® signage

An Android box is cheaper on the purchase order and more expensive everywhere else. Here's the honest engineering case, and when a box is genuinely the right answer.

3 min read
Deployment

Migrating from Xibo® for Android to BrightSign®, display by display

The good news about this migration is how little of it there is. Your CMS doesn't change at all, and you can do it one screen at a time, with both player types running side by side.

3 min read
Engineering

Why video walls drift: sync groups, genlock and PTP

A wall that drifts is usually a wall that was bought wrong. What frame-accurate sync actually requires, and why no software can rescue a mixed-model wall on Wi-Fi.

3 min read
Licensing

Per-device licensing vs cloud seats: what to demand from a signage vendor

Licensing looks like a procurement detail until an outage, an RMA, or a vendor exit turns it into an operational one. Four questions worth asking first.

3 min read
Product

Introducing XiPlay: full-feature signage, one license

Why we built a BrightSign® player for Xibo® CMS, and why one license unlocks everything, whether you run one screen or a thousand.

1 min read
Engineering

Why your screens should never go black

A black screen in a lobby is worse than stale content: it reads as broken. Here's why players go dark, and the architecture that prevents it.

3 min read

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