Hardware & Compatibility

Our software, your hardware

We are a software company. We do not manufacture screens, media players, mini-PCs or the chips inside them, and we do not control the firmware they ship with or the updates their makers push out later.

That is deliberate — it is why you can buy standard hardware from your usual supplier instead of a proprietary box from us. The trade-off is that two devices which look equivalent on a spec sheet can behave differently in practice, and neither of us finds that out from the spec sheet.

1. What each player needs

• Android player — Android 9 or newer, on a media player or a commercial display with Android built in. The same player runs on Android TV and Google TV devices.
• Windows player — Windows 10 or 11, on a PC or mini-PC.
• Raspberry Pi player — a Raspberry Pi 4 running 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS.
• Samsung player — commercial Samsung Smart Signage displays, SSSP 6.
• Browser player — a current version of Chrome or Edge.

Meeting the baseline means the player will install and run. It does not by itself guarantee that a particular device will play any particular content smoothly — see the next section.

2. What varies between devices

These differences come from the hardware and its operating system, not from your PixelFlow account:

• Video formats and resolution. Which video files a device can play, and at what resolution, depends on the video decoder built into it. A file that plays on one player may not play on another.
• How much can play at once. Many devices can decode only one video at a time, so a design containing several videos may not behave the way it does on a desktop preview.
• How designed layouts render. Templates you build in the designer are drawn by the device’s own web engine. Older engines support fewer layout and font features, so the same template can look different across devices.
• Sound. Where audio comes out — HDMI or a headphone socket — is an operating-system setting on the device, and the default is not always the one you want.
• Multiple displays. How many screens a single player can drive, and how they are arranged, depends on the device’s own outputs.
• Sustained performance. Small fanless devices can slow down when hot. A device that is fine for a short demonstration may behave differently after hours of continuous playback.

3. Please pilot before you roll out

Before installing PixelFlow across a site or a fleet, please install it on the actual hardware model you intend to buy, play your actual content on it, and leave it running. This is the single most useful thing you can do, and it is the step we ask you to take.

A player working well on one device is not evidence that a different model will behave the same way — nor is a short test evidence about a screen that will run for weeks. Most surprises show up in the first day of a realistic pilot and cost almost nothing to fix at that point. The same surprises found after fifty units are installed are expensive for everyone.

We are happy to help you interpret what you see during a pilot. If you are choosing hardware and want a view before you buy, ask us first — support@pixelflow-studio.com.

4. Changes we do not control

A device that works today can behave differently later for reasons that sit outside PixelFlow: a manufacturer firmware update, an operating-system update, a browser update, or someone changing a setting on the device. We keep our players working across the platforms listed above, but we cannot prevent or undo a change made by a hardware maker.

5. Your network, power and environment

Once content has downloaded, screens keep playing without an internet connection — that is a deliberate part of the design, described in our Service Level Agreement. A connection is still needed to download new content, to receive commands you send from the dashboard, and to report back what has played.

Connectivity, power supply, ventilation and physical installation are yours to arrange. Screens that lose power, overheat or sit on an unreliable network will not perform as intended, and that is outside our control.

6. What this means

We provide the player software and keep it working on the platforms listed in section 1. We do not warrant that it will run on hardware outside that list, and we are not liable for a specific device model failing to run a player, failing to play specific media, or performing differently from another device.

Nothing on this page limits liability that cannot be limited by law, or reduces the commitments in our Terms of Service and Service Level Agreement. Where this page and those documents overlap, they are read together — this one describes the hardware boundary; section 11 of the Terms sets the overall limit of liability, and section 4 of the SLA lists what falls outside our availability commitment.

If a device on the supported list will not work with PixelFlow and a pilot has not resolved it, talk to us. We would rather help you choose hardware that works than have a screen sitting dark.