The TL;DR
Device Compatibility & Important Hardware Notes
We built BarnieCat Signage to be as accessible and resilient as possible, but because the Android TV and Fire OS ecosystems are so diverse, there are a few important things to know about how your specific hardware will handle the software.
Hardware Performance & 4K Displays
BarnieCat Signage was specifically designed, optimized, and heavily tested on budget-friendly media players (such as the standard Amazon Fire TV Stick and the Walmart Onn Google TV stick).
Standard HD Signs
If you are running standard 1080p picture slideshows or simple menus, budget sticks will handle the workload perfectly.
Flawless 4K & Heavy Media
BarnieCat is capable of pushing breathtaking, crystal-clear 4K video to massive displays. Because 4K rendering requires significant processing power, budget sticks may stutter. To unlock the ultimate premium signage experience, we highly recommend pairing our software with higher-tier hardware, such as the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, Chromecast with Google TV 4K, or the Nvidia Shield.
Auto-Start & Power Loss Recovery
BarnieCat is programmed to automatically launch and resume playing your digital sign the moment power is restored to the device. However, device manufacturers have varying security rules that dictate how apps are allowed to behave on startup.
Amazon Fire OS
Amazon actively attempts to block third-party applications from launching on boot. BarnieCat is engineered with special overlay permissions to bypass this restriction, but if the device loses power, you will likely see a brief "Blocked" system message on the screen for a few seconds before BarnieCat successfully takes over and loads your sign.
Android / Google TV
On certain devices, the auto-start feature will not work immediately out of the box. You may be required to dive into the device's system settings to manually grant BarnieCat the "Display over other apps" permission, or enable Developer Options to allow the software to launch itself automatically after a power failure.