Resources · Glossary
The words vendors use
without explaining them.
Signage quotes are full of terms that sound like industry standards and are often one vendor’s product name. These are the ones worth knowing before you sign anything.
Composition
A layout built from media and apps — the arrangement of zones that makes up one screen. In ScreenQube this is the step between uploading media and publishing it.
Content management system (CMS)
The browser-based software you actually work in. ScreenQube is a CMS for screens; it is not the screen and not the player.
Daypart
Scheduling content to different times of day — a breakfast menu until eleven, lunch after it. The most common reason anyone schedules at all.
Device profile
A saved screen configuration — orientation, position, size, logo — that can be applied to many screens at once.
DOOH
Digital out-of-home. Advertising sold on screens in public places. A screen owner selling advertising time is doing DOOH; an organisation showing its own content is not.
Facility
A location containing screens. ScreenQube groups screens by facility, with a switcher in the console header and a default facility per user.
FIDS
Flight information display system. The arrivals and departures boards in an airport. The transport equivalent is a passenger information system, or PIS.
Kiosk
A screen a person touches rather than only watches. Touch handling is a genuinely different capability from playback.
Media library
The central store of images and video. The point of a library rather than folders on a player is that replacing a file once changes it everywhere it plays.
Pairing code
The short code a new screen displays so you can register it against your account. How a display joins an estate without anyone typing a password on a television.
Player
The small computer driving the screen. It fetches content and plays it. ScreenQube’s player is an Android application.
Playlist
An ordered sequence of content. Distinct from a schedule, which decides when the playlist runs.
QuickPlay
ScreenQube’s interrupt mode — content pushed to a screen immediately, ahead of whatever was scheduled. Built for flash sales and emergencies.
Resolution
The pixel dimensions of the screen. Content cut at the wrong resolution is either soft or cropped; neither is fixable after the fact.
SoC display
A screen with the player built in, so no external box is needed. Convenient, but it ties you to that manufacturer’s platform.
Uptime
The proportion of time a screen was online and playing. Measured, not assumed — a screen that is powered on but showing a blank playlist is not up.
Video wall
Several screens arranged to act as one larger display. The hard part is synchronisation, not the mounting.
Zone
A region of a composition holding one kind of content — a video area, a sidebar showing weather, a ticker along the bottom.
Related
Where these come up.
A term we have missed?
Tell us and we will add it. The list is meant to be useful, not complete for its own sake.