Products / Devices & developers

Hoq Screen

Design, schedule and play signage on one screen or a whole video wall.

Open Hoq ScreenLive24 featuresscreen.hoq.app

What it does

You lay out a screen in a designer with zones for video, images, text, clocks, weather, web pages and live data. You build playlists and schedules, and each schedule rule picks content by day of week, time of day and date range. The highest-priority matching rule wins, and a fallback plays when nothing matches.

Any browser can be a player. Open screen.hoq.app/play on a TV, a Raspberry Pi or a Fire TV and it shows a six-digit code. You type that code into the console and the screen is yours. Players check in every 30 seconds, and a change you save reaches them over a live connection.

For walls, one canvas is split into viewports and each screen shows its own rectangle. Screens on one wall can sit behind one player or several. Hoq Player Pro, a native Linux player, drives several screens from one box as one GPU-composited wall and keeps playing from local disk when the network drops.

When something urgent happens, an emergency takeover puts one message or image on every screen in your account. It overrides all other content until you lift it.

In numbers

6digits in the pairing code a new screen shows

30 sbetween player heartbeats

365days of proof-of-play history in one CSV export

4ready-made templates: lobby welcome, clock and weather, headlines ticker, cafe menu board

Specifications

Players	Any web browser at /play, a Linux kiosk player for Raspberry Pi 5 and mini-PCs (.deb or AppImage), Fire TV through a launcher app, Google Cast TVs, and Hoq Player Pro on Linux mini-PCs.
Pairing	The screen shows a six-digit code. You type it into the console and pick what the screen plays.
Check-in	Players send a heartbeat every 30 seconds and get pushed changes over a live socket in between.
Offline playback	Player Pro downloads the media its config uses to local disk and boots from its last good config, so it keeps playing through outages and reboots. The web player caches images and the last good config.
Video walls	A canvas is divided into viewports, one per screen. Screens on a wall can be driven by one player or several.
Wall cost check	Every wall, scene and layout is checked against the boxes that play it: decode limits, missing hardware decoders, oversized video and canvas no screen shows.
Video re-encoding	A video too large for its box, or in a codec the box cannot decode in hardware, can be re-encoded to the exact size it shows, as HEVC or H.264.
Proof of play	Download a CSV of what played, for any period from 1 to 365 days.
Roles	Members author content, admins delete and run fleet-wide actions, owners manage the account. People can be limited to named locations.
Sign-in	Hoq ID: an emailed code or a passkey.

Features

24 features, all shipped. Listed from the product's code and documentation; each row shows the day it was last checked.

Design 5
Zone designer	Lay out a fixed-size canvas with zones for video, image, text, clock, weather, web page, data and audio.
Templates	Start from a lobby welcome, clock and weather, headlines ticker or cafe menu board.
AI layout	Describe a layout in a sentence and get a first draft in the designer.
Scenes and timeline	Arrange clips on a timeline across a canvas, with fades and zooms, and play a scene as content.
Live data zones	Show rows from a CSV, JSON or RSS feed, or a URL, inside a zone.

Scheduling 3
Playlists	Order items, set each item's duration and reuse a playlist on many screens.
Schedules	Rules pick content by weekday, time window and date range; the highest priority match wins, else a fallback.
Emergency takeover	One message or image on every screen in the account until you lift it.

Walls 5
Viewports	Split one canvas across several screens, each showing its own rectangle.
Wall editor	Place screens on the wall, set bezels and preview what each screen shows.
Ready-made moves	Chase, Cascade, Mirror and Hero + sides built from the wall's own screens.
Cost meter	Flags video a box cannot decode, oversized video and seams that cut through small boxes.
Test pattern	Show a full-wall test pattern to line up screens; it turns itself off after 15 quiet minutes.

Fleet 6
Pair by code	A new screen shows six digits; type them in to claim it.
Screenshots	See what a screen is showing right now from the console.
Remote commands	Reboot, restart, reload or screenshot a player.
Locations and rooms	Group screens by location and room, and limit people to the locations they look after.
Proof-of-play CSV	Export what played for up to 365 days.
Content API	Swap the content of one box on a canvas with an API key (scope screen:api).

Players 5
Web player	Any browser at /play; a service worker keeps the last good config and up to 150 images.
Linux kiosk player	Electron kiosk for Raspberry Pi 5 and mini-PCs that reloads itself after a crash or hang.
Fire TV	A launcher app installs the player on Fire TV.
Google Cast	Cast receiver page for Cast TVs, set up from a box on the same network.
Player Pro	Native Linux player that composites several screens as one GPU wall and plays from local disk.

Works with

Hoq DevicesA Hoq Devices box can be given the screen role, and the agent installs and runs the player for you.
Hoq IntelligenceAI layout drafts are made through Hoq Intelligence and billed to your account.
Hoq ID and platformYou sign in with Hoq ID, and organizations share screens with their members.

Your data

Where it is kept	Layouts, schedules and the play log are in Hoq Screen's database. Uploaded media is stored by Hoq Screen and served to players from screen.hoq.app/m/.
Getting it out	Proof of play exports as CSV. A full export of layouts and media is not documented yet.
If you leave	Not documented yet.

APIs and standards

Content API: POST /v1/canvases/{canvas}/boxes/{box} with a Bearer key (scope screen:api)
Player protocol: /v1/device/register, /v1/player/config, /v1/player/heartbeat
Proof of play: /app/screen/report.csv?days=1..365
Standard: Google Cast receiver
Standard: HLS
Standard: RSS
Standard: CSV
Standard: JSON
Standard: H.264
Standard: HEVC

Compared

Checked 2026-11-01	Hoq Screen	Yodeck	ScreenCloud	OptiSigns
Price per screen per month	Not published yet	$8 (Basic); $12 Premium; $16 Enterprise¹	$20 (Core, billed annually)²	$10 monthly or $9 billed yearly (Standard)³
Player hardware	Any browser, Raspberry Pi 5 and Linux mini-PCs, Fire TV, Google Cast TVs, Player Pro on Linux	Own Raspberry Pi player, web, Android, Fire OS, ChromeOS, Windows, Samsung Tizen, LG webOS, BrightSign⁴	Own OS player, Fire OS, Android/Google TV, ChromeOS, Windows, Samsung Tizen, LG webOS Signage, BrightSign, iPadOS⁵	Own players, Fire TV, Android, Windows, Linux, Raspberry Pi, ChromeOS, BrightSign, LG, Samsung, Roku, Apple TV, macOS⁶
Offline playback	Player Pro plays cached media from disk through outages and reboots; web player keeps images and the last config	Media runs at least 30 days offline; web pages and live streams do not⁷	Caches images, video and documents; no offline on iOS/iPadOS⁸	Offline playback on all plans³
Video wall	Built in: one canvas split into viewports, one or many players; Player Pro drives several screens from one box	Video wall support, one player per screen¹	Windows players with several outputs, or a separate wall controller⁹	Add-on at $25.00/mo per wall; needs Pro (3 screens) or ProMax (4) player¹⁰
Pairing a screen	6-digit code on the screen	8- or 9-digit registration code⁴	6-character code¹¹	Pair code on the screen¹²
Proof of play	CSV export, up to 365 days	Playback reports, Basic and up¹	Proof-of-play logs on Pro¹³	Proof of play report on higher plans³
Emergency alerts	Manual takeover of every screen; no CAP feed	Emergency alerts plus CAP¹	Emergency Alerts app with CAP sources, Pro and Enterprise¹⁴	Emergency message and CAP via webhook, Pro Plus and up¹⁵
Public API	Content swap per box with a scoped key	REST API, Premium and Enterprise¹⁶	GraphQL API²	OptiSync from Pro Plus; GraphQL on Enterprise³