No, these are separate platforms. A player can only be associated to and managed by one platform.

The free BrightSign Control is generally recommended regardless of your CMS. It offers highly useful tools for player setup and management, and works seamlessly alongside any CMS. Many of our CMS partners have already integrated or are in the process of integrating their products with BrightSign Control to provide a more unified experience within their CMS.

BrightSign Author is an authoring tool and is BrightSign's CMS. If you are using a non-BrightSign CMS, you by definition will not be using BrightSign Author as your CMS.

Yes. Both BrightSign Author and BrightAuthor Classic can be installed on the same Windows PC. However, as mentioned above, players can only be used with one app or the other.

No. BSN.Cloud requires players to be on BrightSignOS 8 (8.0.119) or later.

BrightSign Control is accessed via a website so internet access is required.

The BrightSign Author desktop app can be used without internet access for Publishing Modes like Standalone or Local Network. For other Publishing Modes like Author Plus and Web Folder, internet access is required.

Please see this page for port and URL information.

The Local Network Publishing Mode requires that the player be accessible over a local network. It does not work over the internet. This Publishing Mode supports a maximum of ten players on a local network. If more players are added, unreliable behavior may result when content is published.

For larger deployments, the Author Plus or Web Folder Publishing Modes are recommended, both of which require internet access.

There are several ways that players can access network-based content without a BrightSign account:

Instead of playing media files as part of a presentation, players can also play media files directly (i.e., not as part of a presentation). When the player is off, place the desired image, video, or audio files in the root folder of your player storage and then turn the player back on. These files will then play alphabetically as a looping playlist.

This option has significant limitations:

If this playback method isn't working:

Any player model with a USB port can play content from a USB thumb or hard drive. BrightSignOS versions 6.1.57 and later allow players to support storage devices up to 1TB. Earlier BrightSignOS versions let you use USB drives up to 500GB. The storage device should be formatted using FAT32 or exFAT.

You can format your drive using NTFS to play files larger than 4GB if your player doesn't support exFAT. However, this is only compatible with players configured for the Standalone Publishing Mode: NTFS-formatted storage cannot receive network updates (it will be read only). Furthermore, you cannot use any functions that write to the storage including Logging, Remote Screenshots, and Variables.

No, player activation is an alternate method for provisioning your player. If your player is online in your BSN.Cloud network and has an assigned Setup File, then activation is not necessary.

Yes, players are capable of displaying HTML pages by placing the index.html file, along with any required content files, in the root folder of the storage device. HTML presentations can be published using either the Standalone publishing mode (i.e., copying the files directly to the storage device and inserting the storage device into the player) or by uploading the files to the player's microSD card via the SD tab of the player's Diagnostic Web Server (DWS).

Players support True Type Font files (.ttf) as well as Web Open Font files (.woff/.woff2) which can be added to the player's storage device. If no fonts are specified or provided, the player will use its default system font.

While BrightSign Author is required to create multi-zone presentations, a limited set of interactive functionality is available for HTML pages via BrightScript-JavaScript Objects.

Use the linked scripts to disable or enable the startup progress bar.