In exceptional cases it is possible that a player shows unexpected content. This can be either:
The reason for both these things is possibly the same but it might require different actions to solve the issue.
The most likely underlying reason for both these events is the fact that the player identifies itself to our servers using a hardware-derived identifier. This is not always the case. It depends on the type of player the operating system and the startup scripts that are used.
Our servers need to identify players in order to supply the correct content to each player.
The advantage of a hardware derived identifier is that it is more "sticky" than other means of identifying a player. This means that if there is a problem with a player and it needs to be "repaired" meaning the SSD, USB thumb drive or SD card needs to be replaced or if the operating system or the browser needs to be re-installed it is very likely that the player, after this intervantion, will startup and play the correect content straight away.
The disadvantage is that such a hardware-derived identifyer can cause unexpected behaviour if one is unaware that such an identifyer is in place. This might lead to the following, the first of the unexpected situation mentioned above:
A Raspberry Pi is used in one location to play content and it is decided to replace or remove that player and use it on a different location to show different content. The device is removed and to "clean" the device a new SD card is created with the most up to date version of Raspberry PiOS that can be downloaded from our site. When the Raspberry Pi is installed in the new location and turned on it might start playing back the content that it played before instead of presenting the registration code that was expected.
In that case the old player registration was not deleted and, because a Raspberry Pi using our version of Raspberry PiOS uses a hardware derived identifyer, the old player registration was found and the associated channel started playing.
The solution to this situations is relatively simple; After deleting the old player registration that can be found in the Player tab of the Settings screen, the player will present a registration code that can be used to register the player again and assign a new channel. You can also assign the appropriate new channel to the existing player registration and assing a new name (and label) to indicate the new location of the player.
The second situation, player plays a different channel than is specified in the settings of the player, can also happen because of the hardware-derived identifyer under specific circumstances. These "circumstances" are usually either that:
The first is a similar siuation to the one described above. The solution is to delete the "old" player using Player tab of the Settings page.
In the case of players that are deployed using a pre-made operating system image the situation is more complex. In that case all these players will have the same hardware derived identifyer. A recent change that was made to fix issues that can occur after an operating system or browser update causes all the registered players to play content that is specified by the setting of only one palyer. Removing that player setting will however not solve the problem since all the registered players and thus all the associated player settings will have the same hardware derived identifyer.
Deleting the player settings will not take away the underlying problem which is that all players have the same hardware derived identifyer that should be unique to each of these devices, since they all are unique hardware insatnces (consist of a unique combination of hardware components).
The best solution is to ensure that the hardware derived identifyer of the player is unique. This can be achieved by folowing these rules when creating operating system images or when deployig them on devices. We describe these for Windows based images, they also hold for other operating systems but you might need to find alternatiev tools to achieve them.
For detailed instructions on how to create an operating system image specific for use on signage players see our article on this subject