A screen is one display and the device driving it, managed as a single thing. It has a name, a location, settings, labels, and a health report of its own.
What it plays comes from a playlist assigned to it, which is how content reaches any screen.
It also holds one license for as long as it is enabled.
One device, one screen
The count is devices, not panels. A player driving a four-panel video wall as one continuous picture is one screen and one license, because there is one device and one thing being shown.
Two players in the same room are two screens even if they show the same playlist.
Two kinds
Every screen is managed from the same dashboard, appears in the same list, and takes the same playlists. What differs is how much of the device Screenly controls: on ScreenlyOS it is the whole device, so the dashboard can reboot it, screenshot it, and set resolution and overscan, and on Anywhere it is our app inside someone else’s system, so it cannot.
Neither is a lesser screen. Anywhere trades depth of control for running on hardware you already own, which is usually the right trade until it is not. ScreenlyOS or Screenly Anywhere has the row-by-row comparison and what each platform asks of you.
One thing at a time
A screen shows one item at a time, and there is no way to split it into zones. Part of the reason is technical, and the bigger part is that multi-zone layouts do not work well: people look at a screen for a few seconds, and a layout divided into a video, a ticker, and a sidebar spends those seconds competing with itself.
If you want several things on one display, build them into one piece of content, a single web page or app laid out the way you want, which the screen then shows as one item.
Playback only
A screen plays what is assigned to it. Touch input is not supported.