Digital-Signage on Cablecast 7.x

January 6, 2021
General InfoCablecast CGHow To CG

Starting with the release of Cablecast 7.x, Carousel was forked into "CablecastCG" to help focus on the future of bulletin-board and developing a feature set that strengthens the bulletin-board feature set. With CablecastCG, any digital-signage endpoints need to be adjusted.

With the installation of Cablecast 7.1 on a Flex or SX system, moving to CablecastCG is optional. Just keep in mind any new features brought to Cablecast CG will not be available to you. When Carousel 7 is being used for Bulletin-board players, you are limited to staying on Carousel 7.4.8 for compatibility reasons.

This is a long article, In summary: If you want to use your Cablecast hardware for serving Digital-Signage, we heavily recommend reaching out to our sister division, carouselsignage.com for options. Existing customers can migrate data.

Contents

New Customers wanting digital-signage

New customers wanting to leverage the benefits of having Digital-signage served from their cablecast system is still an option. Carousel 7 can be loaded on your head-unit alongside Cablecast.

  1. Review what players are supported via Carousel 7.
  2. Contact https://www.carouselsignage.com/
  3. Deploy a Carousel Server on Carousel-Signage suggested method or Carousel Cloud.

Managing Bulletin-board players will be done through CablecastCG. Managing your digital-signage endpoints will be done through Carousel 7. You may also inquire with carousel-signage about utilizing their Carousel Cloud offering, eliminating the need for an on-site signage server.

Existing Cablecast 6.x Customers wanting to retain Digital-Signage

You have a couple options for keeping digital-signage when upgrading from Cablecast 6.x to Cablecast 7.

Migrating Content to Dedicated Carousel Server (Recommended)

If you want to keep Digital-Signage, you can spin up a dedicated Digital-Signage server on a Virtual Machine or another piece of hardware. Once this is done, you can migrate the content, licenses and other content to this other server.

Opt'ing out of CablecastCG (Not Recommended)

If you're running Cablecast 6.x, want to upgrade to Cablecast 7 and have digital signage players (Windows, Brightsigns, etc), you can still retain those players.

When upgrading Cablecast, you have the option to use or opt-out of using the new "CablecastCG" software. Carousel will remain installed on the Cablecast head unit for use with digital-signage players. Though we recommend whenever making large changes to your Carousel install on Cablecast hardware (Swapping out players, upgrading minor / major versions) to consider migrating Signage to a dedicated machine, virtual machine, or Carousel Cloud.

Carousel 7.4.8 only supports specific Brightsign models (Brightsign Series 3), and we cannot provide technical support for Brightsign players. Also, the code base for Brightsign players on Cablecast systems are no longer being maintained. They could break in the future.

Opt'ing out of CablecastCG is a last resort suggestion. Doing so will limit you from getting new releases to the software.

Brightsign Support

We cannot provide any support for Brightsign players when running on Cablecast hardware. We do not recommend adding new Brightsign players onto Cablecast hardware.
The current supported list of Brightsign players on Carousel 7.4.8 is:

  • XT Players
    XT244
    XT1144
    XT243
    XT1143
  • BRS XD Players
    XD234
    XD1034
    XD233
    XD1033
  • BRS HD Players
    HD224
    HD1024
    HD223
    HD1023
  • BRS LS Players
    LS424
    LS423

Questions?

If you need help understanding which direction to take your digital-signage needs, please feel free to reach out to sales@cablecast.,tv or by contacting someone at https://www.carouselsignage.com/.