If you run Scala players, the hardware still works. The question is what happens next, and that changed in 2026.
Where Scala hardware stands
Scala is now part of Vertiseit, which completed the acquisition in June 2026. Vertiseit is a software platform company, alongside Dise, Grassfish, and Visual Art, and the player hardware line is not where its attention sits.
Several player models were already discontinued before that. Together it means an existing fleet runs on hardware nobody is actively building a future for, even though the players themselves are fine.
There is no emergency here. It is the sort of thing worth deciding on your own schedule rather than on the day a player fails.
Two problems, one answer
The players you have and the players you will need are usually treated as separate problems. They are the same one.
Reuse the players you already have
Scala players are standard x86 machines. Nothing about the hardware ties it to the software that shipped on it, so the existing fleet can run Screenly instead. No new hardware and no capital request.
Have somewhere to go when one fails
When a player does eventually die, the replacement is a current Screenly Player rather than a hunt for second-hand stock of a discontinued model.
The fleet ends up mixed for a while, and that is fine. Reimaged Scala players and Screenly Players appear side by side in the same dashboard and are managed the same way.
That second part is the one people underrate. It turns a failure from a small crisis into an order.
What reimaging involves
Support sends you the image and the steps for your model. You write it to a USB stick, boot the player from it, and the machine becomes a Screenly device. Ubuntu Core underneath, our playback engine on top, managed from your dashboard, updated over the air with signed transactional updates that roll themselves back if they fail.
Whatever the player was running before, Windows or Linux, comes off. The only visit needed is the person walking to the player with the USB stick. On a fleet that already boots over the network, the same image can go out by PXE with no visit at all.
What it does not do
It does not make old hardware faster. A player that struggles with demanding content today will struggle after the change, and what a given player handles depends on its memory and its generation as much as its model name. Tell us the configuration you have and we will tell you what to expect from it.
It also does not work on every model yet. We only call a model supported once someone here has booted one and watched it play, and several models are still untested. Supported models shows exactly where each one stands, including the ones we cannot yet vouch for.
Where to start
Tell us which models you run and roughly how many. If your model is confirmed we will send you the image and the steps. If it is not, that conversation is usually what moves it up our testing queue.
Get in touch, or read the guides for what the process involves.