Understanding how Players download, store, and remove content is essential for diagnosing display delays, storage issues, and unexpected playback behavior. This article explains the complete content synchronization cycle.
How It Works
When content is published to a Player, the download starts immediately. The process follows three main rules:
1. Full download before playback
The Player always downloads the entire file before playing it. Partially downloaded content is never displayed, regardless of connection speed.
The Player Events log lists each file as it downloads. While items are still downloading, the status badge next to the Wi-Fi icon shows how many downloads are still pending.
Once every file has been downloaded, the status badge becomes an empty green circle, indicating the Player is fully synchronized.
2. Playback of updated content only starts on the next loop
Even if the download completes in real time, new content will only appear on screen once the current loop finishes. For example, if the active loop is 30 minutes long, the new content will not be shown until the next cycle begins.
3. When content is deleted from storage
The Player only deletes a file when both of the following conditions are met at the same time:
- The content is not scheduled to play in the loop currently running.
- The content is not scheduled to play at any future time.
As long as either condition is not satisfied, the file remains on the Player's storage.
Player with No Available Storage
A recurring issue occurs when a Player's storage is completely full. In this state, the Player detects pending updates, attempts to download them, fails due to lack of space, and restarts the process indefinitely. The content displayed on screen remains whatever was stored before the problem occurred.
To resolve this, you need to free up space before publishing new content:
- Unpublish all content currently published to that Player.
- Wait for the Player to finish clearing its storage.
- Republish only the content you need.
To prevent this from happening again, configure the Player's Download Restrictions. This feature controls which content is downloaded based on playback rules and scheduling dates, preventing unnecessary files from taking up space on the device. See the Download Restrictions article for more details.
Troubleshooting
- Content was published but is not showing on screen. The Player may still be downloading the file, or the current loop has not finished yet. Check the Player status in the Player Manager. If it shows "syncing", wait for the download to complete and the loop to end.
- The Player is showing old content that should have been removed. Content is only removed when it is not scheduled for the current loop or any future dates. Check whether the content still has an active scheduling rule, or wait for the current loop to finish.
- The Player's storage is full and it is not downloading new content. Unpublish all content currently published to that Player, wait for storage to be freed, then republish only what is needed. To prevent recurrence, configure the Download Restrictions.
- The Player appears offline most of the time or shows as "syncing" for long periods. This happens when the content update interval is set to a value other than real-time. Players with longer intervals appear offline between syncs. See the Content update interval article to adjust this setting.