There are many reasons a digital sign may not display content properly. While we can’t list every issue that may come up, here are some common errors and solutions to get your signs back up and running.
New sign showing “congratulations” message and not content
Problem: New sign is showing “Congratulations! Four Winds Interactive Content Player is Installed” but no other content.
Solution: If you see this, then there is a disconnect between your player machine and the Content Experience Builder application. In most cases, this is an easy fix.
- Open the Content Player Configuration on the player machine.
- Confirm the player is licensed and connected to Poppulo Cloud via the About tab. You will see something similar to the following:
- License: Application licensed = sign is connected to FWI Cloud and ready to receive content. Move to Step 3 to continue troubleshooting
- Legacy License / License expired or invalid (with a button to Activate Cloud) = sign is not yet connected to the Poppulo Cloud system and needs activated.
- Contact us at DigitalSignage@psu.edu to receive an invitation code to activate this device.
- Open the Channels tab and confirm the following:
- Ensure the checkbox is checked beside “Retrieve deployment from a server.”
- Ensure the Deployment ID is filled in.
- The Deployment ID is the computer name of the machine running Content Player.
- This should exactly match what is displayed in the Deployment ID field for this player in Content Experience Builder.
- Expand the Connection Properties dropdown and ensure it contains login information.
- If nothing shows here, contact us at digitalsignage@psu.edu to obtain the connection credentials.
- Once the application is licensed and the Channel tab configurations are correct, you should begin seeing the new content shortly.
- You may need to redeploy content from Content Experience Builder.
Content player not displaying properly
Problem: Content is not displaying full screen, is off-center, or some other display inconsistency.
- This is likely caused by the screen resolution settings on the Content Player machine.
Solution: Open your device’s display settings. In most situations, the settings should be set to the following:
In some cases, you may need to open the “Advanced scaling settings” and confirm:
- The toggle for “Let Windows try to fix apps so they’re not blurry” is turned off.
- Custom Scaling text box is empty.
If the problem persists, contact us at digitalsignage@psu.edu and we’ll work with you to further resolve the issue.
Sign displays old content after deploying from Content Experience Builder
When you deploy content from Content Manager to a sign, there is typically a 10-15 minute delay before the content player will pick up those changes. This is based on the Polling Interval setting on the Channels tab in the Content Player Configuration setting on the player machine.
There are times when, even after the polling interval expires, that the sign does not update with the updated changes. This is often due to a caching issue on the player machine. There are two ways to resolve this issue:
Content Player Configuration:
- Close the Content Player application.
- Open the Content Player Configuration settings and click on the Channels tab.
- Click on “Clear Disk Cache”
- Restart the Content Player application.
- Your sign should now see the new content. If it does not, repeat steps 1-4 above a few times.
Poppulo Cloud Devices:
- Log in to Poppulo and select the Devices Module
- Navigate to the sign you wish to update.
- Either check the box beside the sign or click on the sign name.
- Click on “Clear Cache”
- When the pop-up appears, check the box beside “Restart Player”
- This will restart the content player after clearing the cache.
- Your sign should now see the new content. If it does not, repeat steps 4 and 5 above.