Glossary
Digital signage, in plain English
The vocabulary of signage projects (protocols, hardware, scheduling and licensing terms) defined in two or three sentences each. Link to any term with its anchor.
Signage projects fail on vocabulary more often than on technology: a "video wall" that turns out to mean four unsynchronised screens, a "player" that means a CMS. These are the 28 terms that actually come up, grouped by the part of a deployment they belong to, and defined in two or three sentences each.
The stack
Players, CMS and the protocol between them
The four things every signage deployment is made of, and the protocol that connects them.
- Digital signage player #
- The device (and its software) that sits behind a screen and renders the content a CMS schedules onto it. The player is the part that must not fail in public. The CMS can be down for an hour without an audience ever knowing; a player can't.
- CMS (Content Management System) #
- The central software where signage content is designed, organized and scheduled across displays. In an XiPlay deployment the CMS is your own Xibo® server; XiPlay is the player that renders what it schedules.
- Xibo® #
- An established digital-signage CMS by Xibo Signage Ltd., self-hosted or cloud-hosted, managing layouts, media and scheduling across display fleets. XiPlay is an independent player compatible with Xibo® CMS on BrightSign® hardware.
- BrightSign® #
- The de-facto standard purpose-built digital-signage player hardware, made by BrightSign LLC: solid-state, fanless appliances in several series (XT, XD, HD, LS) with signage-specific capabilities like genlock sync and HDMI-In.
- XMDS #
- The Xibo® protocol players use to talk to the CMS: registering as a display, downloading layouts and media, fetching schedules and reporting back. XiPlay implements XMDS v3 and v4, which is why BrightSign® players running it appear in Xibo® as normal displays. How XiPlay uses XMDS →
Content
What plays, and when
The vocabulary of building and scheduling content in a CMS.
- Layout #
- A Xibo® content design for a screen: the arrangement of regions and widgets that make up what plays. Layouts are built in the CMS and rendered by the player.
- Region (zone) #
- A rectangular area inside a layout with its own content timeline. Multi-zone layouts run several regions at once (a menu list next to a promo video next to a ticker) on one screen.
- Widget #
- A content module placed in a region: text, image, video, web page, RSS, weather, dataset, stream and more. XiPlay renders the full Xibo® widget set on BrightSign® hardware.
- Campaign #
- An ordered group of layouts scheduled as a unit in Xibo®, and the typical way retail promotions rotate several designs through a screen.
- Scheduling #
- Deciding what plays where and when: by display, group, date, time and priority. In an XiPlay deployment scheduling lives entirely in your Xibo® CMS; players follow it, even from cache when the network is down.
- Dayparting #
- Scheduling different content for different times of day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner menus switching automatically is the classic case. A Xibo® scheduling feature XiPlay players follow on cue.
- Display group #
- A named set of displays in Xibo® that can be scheduled as one: all lobby screens, all stores in a region. The unit at which fleet content is usually targeted.
- Proof of play #
- Logged evidence of what actually played on which screen and when, used for advertising reconciliation and compliance. Generated from player playback reporting back to the CMS.
Video walls
Multiple screens, one surface
The terms that decide whether a wall looks seamless or tears at the seams.
- Video wall #
- Multiple screens arranged as one visual surface, each driven by its own player, with playback synchronized so content spans them seamlessly. Each screen in a wall carries its own player and license. Video walls on XiPlay →
- Sync group #
- BrightSign®'s mechanism for frame-accurate playback across multiple players: one leads, the rest follow. Requires same-family models on a wired network with matching firmware, resolution and frame rate.
- Genlock #
- Hardware-level locking of multiple players' video output timing so frames flip in perfect unison: the difference between 'roughly synced' and seamless on content spanning a wall. A BrightSign® XT-series capability.
- Bezel #
- The physical frame around a display panel. On video walls, bezel width determines the visual gap between screens; content that spans a wall is usually compensated for it.
Playback
Inputs, streams and staying alive
How content actually reaches the screen, and what keeps it there when things fail.
- HDMI-In (passthrough) #
- A hardware input that brings a live external source (broadcast TV, a camera, a set-top box) into the player, so the live feed can appear as a region inside a signage layout. Available on BrightSign® XT-series hardware.
- HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) #
- A widely used protocol for delivering live and on-demand video over standard HTTP. XiPlay plays HLS streams inside Xibo® layouts, giving live channels without dedicated broadcast wiring.
- Offline-first playback #
- A player design where content is cached on-device and playback is local, so a network drop pauses only content updates, never the screen. How XiPlay keeps screens alive on unreliable networks. Offline signage explained →
- Watchdog #
- A supervisor that detects a frozen or stalled player and recovers it automatically, without a site visit. XiPlay's self-healing watchdog is why a 3 a.m. freeze doesn't become a morning outage.
Hardware
The box behind the screen
What signage hardware is, how it's installed, and how it's identified.
- Air-gapped network #
- A network physically isolated from the internet, standard in government, defense and secure facilities. Signage there needs licensing that works with no outbound connection at all, which XiPlay provides via signed offline license files. Air-gapped signage explained →
- Solid-state player #
- A player with no moving parts: no fans, no spinning disks. Runs silent, tolerates warm mounting positions, and removes the two most common hardware failure modes of consumer boxes used for signage.
- Multi-output player #
- A signage player with more than one video (HDMI) output, able to drive several screens from one box. On multi-output BrightSign® hardware, XiPlay runs each output as its own independent Xibo® display, with separate content, schedule and orientation. Distinct from a video wall, where several screens show one synchronized image. Multi-screen players →
- SD-card package #
- The complete player software as a single download. XiPlay ships as one: extract the .zip, copy its contents onto an SD card, insert into the BrightSign® player and power on. That is the entire installation. No flashing or imaging tool is needed.
- MAC address #
- The unique hardware identifier of a device's network interface. XiPlay licensing is keyed to each player's real MAC, giving every license a physical anchor, and making a license audit a list of MACs.
Licensing
How signage software is counted
The two terms that decide what you pay and what you own.
- Per-device licensing #
- One license per physical player, rather than per screen-group, per site or per feature tier. XiPlay's model: every license unlocks the complete software on exactly one device, identified by its hardware MAC.
- Seat #
- One licensed device slot on a subscription. A 20-seat subscription licenses 20 players; seats are added or removed on the subscription and assigned to devices in the portal.
How the pieces fit
The whole vocabulary, in one sentence
A CMS schedules layouts made of widgets; it sends them over XMDS to a player, which caches them (offline-first) and renders them on a screen. If several players must act as one surface, they form a sync group.
Everything else in this glossary is a detail hanging off that sentence.
Terms sorted, screens next
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