I am using Info-Beamer for the first time and am very impressed with its capabilities and the excellent implementation. However, I have encountered a problem.
We have a simple requirement to alternately display a webpage and play a video on a screen. As far as I understand, I can only assign one setup to the player at a time.
I have tried several approaches:
Scheduler:
A scheduler is not an option because the video lasts only about 2 minutes and should only be played once. The scheduler’s grid is 15 minutes.
Fullscreen Browser:
I built a small internal webpage that plays the video, but unfortunately, not all codecs are supported by the browser. Additionally, the video stutters too much in full screen, so I had to display the video in a smaller size. Another issue is that the set resolution (Full HD) does not apply to the “Fullscreen Browser”. This means the browser view always runs in 4K.
Scheduled Player:
This is also a great tool. However, when I specify a URL on a page, only a white box is shown. The page was only displayed once. Is there a way to use a “Live Browser”? The weather also updates very slowly. Is there currently a problem with the server?
Does anyone have a simpler idea for this requirement?
You can try the new version 2 of the HD player in combination with the new native browser. That is, if you use a Pi4 or Pi5.
First import the HDV2 player, then the embeddable browser. Create a new setup based n HDV2. On the left, click on Add package… and select the “Embeddable browser”:
On the right in the “content cycle”, select + Add fullscreen slot… and search for “Browser plugin”. Add it and the playlist will look like this:
Enter the Url you want to show at the bottom of the browser slot. Then add other content like images and video, or embed native info-beamer playlists using the + Embed playlist… button.
Assign it to a device and it should mix all content. The HDV2 player is going to be the default package in the future, so any feedback is very welcome.
Thank you very much for the detailed response. This is exactly what I was looking for!
If you’re asking for feedback, I’ve found a few minor points
The “biggest problem” is the embeddable browser. It doesn’t display the status page of our solar system quite correctly. Apparently, the background is black instead of the expected white, resulting in two ugly black bars. Additionally, the local time zone is not correctly passed. As workaround I was able to cover this with an overlay (also a very cool feature). I also found the script function of the old browser very cool (feature request ).
If you want, I can provide the URL of the system via PM.
The order of the content entries seems to be from bottom to top. I would have expected it to be the other way around.
I didn’t understand why I have to enter a URL again on the left side in the browser plugin.
Maybe the content player settings on the device should only be shown if a video wall is actually configured. I find it a bit confusing. Also, the alternative content is only needed for multiple displays, right?
For the power saver, I would like to have a test button to see if the display really turns off and on.
But I’m sure much of this is due to the beta and alpha versions, and you are already working on it. Please consider these only as suggestions from a not yet paying customer
The browser supports transparent pages. I guess if you’re not explicitly style the body, it might be transparent as a result?
Right. I’ll see how this can be added.
Agreed. Something like it or an identical method should be added again. I’m not entirely sure how to remote control the embedding framework version instead of the normal desktop version used in the older package. But I’m sure it’s possible somehow.
You mean in the v2 player package? That would definitely be a bug. I’ll check that.
You don’t. The browser settings page values are ignored if it’s used as a plugin of the hdv2 player. Right now there isn’t a way to signal that within the packages metadata. Thanks for the reminder. I’ll add that!
Good idea. I’m (writing this on a mobile phone, so I can’t check) not sure if this information is available to that embedded device page, but that also sounds useful as it would hide complexity unless needed. Thanks for the idea.
Correct. You can have different content in a single slot and different devices can play them in sync instead of all playing the same content.
Right now you can use the root remote terminal and run tv off or tv on to trigger that. It’s not exposed otherwise. But it should not be too hard to add such a per-device dialog within each device’s detail page. Note that you don’t really need the power saver if you don’t schedule content during off hours as there is a way to make the v2 package turn off the display on its own. The setting for that is at the bottom of its config somewhere.
Okay, the page does not set a background color in the body. Unfortunately, I cannot change this. Can I change the color behind the page?
Yes, it is a v2 player setup.
I have now tried it with more than two entries. On the first call, the first entry is always replaced by the fallback. After that, everything runs perfectly in the right order.
Here, I have noticed a new issue. When switching from one player V2 setup to another player V2 setup, only a black screen is displayed. I have to switch to a completely different setup and switch back to work again.
I hope this helps you. Our screen runs good with the workaround.
This is now fixed in the latest browser package update.
The relevant section of the config UI are now slightly grayed out, but not hidden, as it might still be useful to configure these settings, even if they are not currently used.
The device’s timezone is now passed to the browser.
Or not. It’s unfortunately more difficult than I initially thought: The problem is that switching away from the setup containing the browser instantly removes the browser sub-directory and the plugin code is unloaded.
The playback control code has some lag because it has to wait until potentially multiple devices all have the latest content downloaded, so synced playback is possible. While the control code is waiting, old content is still active. This isn’t a problem for images and videos as info-beamer has a neat mechanism to hold references to already deleted local files while they are still needed. But doing the same for the browser (or any plugin really) isn’t possible. I’ll have to think about that…
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