Keeping your screens current in PixelSuite
A screen still promoting last month's event is worse than a blank one — it tells every member walking past that nobody's minding the place. The technology isn't the hard part here; the habit is. This is how to keep your screens honest, who should have access, and where the step-by-step product documentation lives.
On this page
On this page
Digital signage earns its keep by being current. That's the whole advantage over a printed poster — you can change it in minutes and it costs nothing to change. Venues that treat their screens like a poster frame, updated when someone remembers, get the cost of digital with the freshness of print.
If you only read one thing
- Put an end date on everything, when you put it up. Not later. This one habit prevents almost every stale-screen problem.
- Walk the floor and actually look at your screens once a fortnight. Reading them on a laptop is not the same as seeing them in the room.
- One person owns the screens. With a backup. Screens owned by everyone are current for nobody.
- Fewer, better items beat a long rotation. If a member has to wait through nine slides, they've walked off.
- Ask us to do it if you'd rather. Plenty of venues do — it's not a failure to hand it over.
01 — DocumentationWhere the step-by-step instructions live
PixelSuite has its own help centre, and it's the authority on how the product works. If you want the actual click-by-click — creating a playlist, pairing a device, adding a user, scheduling an advertisement — go there rather than to us:
The help centre covers the mechanics — logging in and account setup, managing and pairing devices, building playlists and advertisements, users and permissions, and API access for integrations. It's searchable, and it's kept up to date with the product.
What this page adds is the part documentation can't tell you: what actually works on a screen in a busy club, how often to change it, who should be allowed to, and the habits that stop your screens quietly going stale. If a step here and the help centre ever disagree, the help centre wins on how the software behaves — and tell us, so we can fix the page.
That's a different problem from content being out of date, and it's usually the player behind the screen rather than anything in PixelSuite. Our restart guide walks any staff member through it in two minutes.
02 — AccessWho should have access, and at what level
The most common two failures we see are opposite ends of the same mistake: only one person can update the screens and they're on leave, or everyone can and nobody does.
- Two or three people, not one and not ten. An owner and a backup who can cover leave, plus perhaps a duty manager who can pull something down urgently.
- Their own accounts, not a shared one. Same reasoning as everywhere else — you can see who scheduled what, and you can remove access when someone leaves. See the staff access guide.
- Ask for the level they need. Someone scheduling this month's promotions doesn't need to be able to reconfigure players or change what's on other venues' screens. The help centre documents user management; ask us if you'd like it set up and we'll do it.
- Tell us when the owner changes. Screen ownership moving on with a departing staff member is a classic route to a stale screen — and to a login nobody can find.
- Sub-clubs can often manage their own. If bowls or golf want to run their own content, that can usually be arranged so they can only touch theirs. Ask.
03 — The one habitEnd dates on everything
If you take one thing from this page: the moment you schedule something, set the date it comes down. Not "I'll remember" — a date, in the system, at the time you create it.
Almost every stale-screen problem we're asked to fix is the same story: content went up for an event, the event happened, and nothing was set to remove it. The screen then advertises a past event until somebody notices — and the person most likely to notice is a member.
| What it is | Set it to end |
|---|---|
| A one-off event | The morning after. Nobody needs to see Saturday's event on Sunday afternoon. |
| A dated promotion | The day the offer ends — not the day you'd hoped to replace it. |
| A seasonal menu | The changeover date, set when the menu goes up. |
| A recurring weekly | No end date, but a review date in your diary every few months — the artwork ages even when the event doesn't. |
| Sponsor or advertiser content | The day the agreement ends. Running a lapsed sponsor's advertisement is awkward; running a current one badly is worse. |
| Anything with a price | Whenever the price is next reviewed. An old price on a screen is an argument at the counter. |
| Trading hours notices | The day normal hours resume. |
The help centre documents exactly where scheduling dates live in the interface. If the difference between an end date and a deletion date isn't obvious to you, ask us — it's worth understanding once so you're confident nothing vanishes that you wanted to keep.
04 — HabitThe ten-minute screen walk
Once a fortnight, walk your venue and look at every screen the way a member does. Not on a laptop — in the room, from where people actually stand.
Is anything on there out of date?
Past events, expired offers, old prices, last season's menu, a sponsor who's finished. Note them and clear them the same day.
Can you read it from where members stand?
Walk to the door, the queue, the table furthest away. Text that's fine on a desktop is often unreadable from six metres, which is the only distance that matters.
How long is the loop?
Stand and watch it all the way round. If you get bored, so does everyone else. Count the items and be honest about whether they all deserve to be there.
Is every screen actually working?
Right screen, right content, right way up, nothing frozen, nothing stretched or squashed, no black bars where artwork is the wrong shape.
Does it suit where it is?
The foyer screen and the sports bar screen shouldn't be showing identical content. A screen at the entrance is for arriving; one above the bar is for what to order next.
Anything missing?
Big event next week with nothing about it on any screen? That's the most valuable thing you'll find on the walk.
Ten minutes, fortnightly, on the same day, assigned to a named person. That's the entire discipline, and it's the difference between screens that sell things and screens people have stopped reading. Pair it with your quarterly planning and most of this looks after itself.
05 — ContentWhat actually works on a screen
A screen in a venue is not a poster and it certainly isn't a page. You have about three seconds of a passing member's attention.
Works
- One message per slide
- A headline readable across the room
- One clear detail — day, time or price
- One action — book, ask staff, see the app
- A strong photo, or clean type on colour
- Six to eight seconds per slide
- Content that suits that particular room
Doesn't
- A printed A4 poster put up as-is
- A PDF menu with twelve items
- Paragraphs, or terms and conditions in full
- Small text and phone numbers you can't read
- Fifteen items in the rotation
- Portrait artwork on a landscape screen
- Photos pulled from Facebook at low resolution
The A4 poster problem. The most common mistake is reusing print artwork on screens. A poster is designed to be read standing still at arm's length; a screen is read at six metres while walking. Same information, different artwork. If you brief us for both at once we'll produce both — see how to brief design work.
Get the shape right. Portrait screens need portrait artwork and landscape screens need landscape. Artwork in the wrong orientation ends up letterboxed with black bars or cropped through the middle of the message. If you're making your own, ask us for the exact dimensions of your players and we'll send a list.
06 — CadenceA rhythm that actually holds
If that sounds like more than your team will sustain, be honest about it now rather than in six months. Tell us what you want to keep control of and what you'd rather we ran — plenty of venues have us manage the screens entirely and just send through what's coming up.
07 — CareCompliance on screens
A screen in your venue is promotional material. That means the restrictions your club already works within don't stop at the front door of your website — gaming advertising restrictions, responsible-service requirements, permit and licence numbers on trade promotions, and any conditions attached to sponsor or supplier artwork.
A few practical ones: don't put gaming machine imagery on a screen that's visible from outside the venue or in a public area, be careful with anything that promotes gaming to a general audience, include the permit or licence details a promotion legally requires, and get gaming-related content past your compliance manager before it's designed rather than after it's live. See the what not to film section for the imagery side of it.
General guidance only, not legal advice — your compliance manager and your regulator are the authority. If you're not sure, ask them before it goes up. It's much easier than taking it down.
Two smaller ones worth knowing: photos of members or staff on screens need the same consent as anywhere else, and children need a parent or guardian's permission. And background music in a video playing on a screen has the same copyright issues as anywhere else — if a clip has a commercial track under it, that's worth checking before it loops in your venue all week.
08 — FaultsWhen something isn't showing
Content problems and hardware problems look identical from the floor. Quick triage:
| What you see | Usually | Do this |
|---|---|---|
| Screen blank or frozen | The player, not the content | Work through the restart guide. Two minutes, any staff member. |
| Old content still showing | Not scheduled to end, or the player hasn't picked up the change | Check the end date first. If it's set correctly and still showing after a restart, log it with us. |
| New content not appearing | Start date, publishing step, or the wrong playlist | Check the schedule dates and which screens it was assigned to. The help centre covers the publishing steps. |
| Artwork stretched or cropped | Wrong orientation or aspect for that screen | Send it to us to resize properly — don't try to force it. |
| Right content, wrong screen | Assignment or grouping | Fixable in a minute. Tell us which screen should show what if you'd rather we did it. |
| One screen out of several | That player or that display | Restart that player. If it recurs, log it — a repeat fault needs looking at properly. |
| All screens out at once | Something bigger — network or power | Don't work through them one by one. Ring us. |
09 — QuestionsThe ones we get asked
Can we just get you to run our screens?
Yes, and a lot of venues do. Send us what's coming up — or better, share your yearly calendar — and we'll design, schedule and retire content so the screens stay current without anyone at your end thinking about it. You keep visibility and can always ask for a change.
How many items should be in the rotation?
Fewer than you want. Four to six per screen is plenty; at eight or more, members stop waiting. If everything feels essential, that's usually a sign the messages need sharpening rather than the loop needing lengthening.
Can different screens show different things?
Yes, and they should. The foyer, the bar, the bistro, the gaming corridor, the bowls green and the function room all have different audiences at different moments. Grouping screens sensibly is one of the biggest quick wins available.
Can we sell advertising on our screens?
Plenty of clubs do, and it can pay for the whole system. Worth thinking through first: what you'll charge, what you'll accept, how long a slot runs, and who chases the artwork. Talk to us and we'll help set it up properly — including making sure lapsed advertisers come down automatically.
Do we need to turn the screens off at night?
Generally no — they're commercial displays and they're usually scheduled to suit your trading hours. If a screen is bright in a residential sightline or you want it off overnight, tell us and we'll set that up.
Can our sub-clubs put their own content up?
Usually yes, scoped so they can only touch their own screens or their own content. It works well for bowls, golf and fishing sections who have news the main club won't always prioritise. Ask us to set it up rather than sharing your own login.
Can screens show live information?
Depending on your setup, yes — things like jackpot displays, draws and live data can be fed in rather than updated by hand. If you're manually retyping a number onto a screen each week, ask us; there's often a better way.
10 — Print thisThe fortnightly screen walk
Print it and put it with whoever owns the screens. Ten minutes, same day each fortnight.
Screen walk — every fortnight
Cyberry Know-How · cyberry.com.au/know-how
Walk the floor and check
- Nothing out of date — past events, old prices
- No expired offers or lapsed sponsors
- Readable from where members actually stand
- Loop short enough to watch all the way round
- Every screen on and showing the right content
- Nothing stretched, cropped or letterboxed
- Content suits that particular room
- Next week's big event is on there
When you schedule anything
- Set the end date at the same time — always
- One message, one detail, one action
- Right orientation for that screen
- Correct permit or licence details included
- Nothing gaming-related unchecked
- Consent for anyone identifiable
Screen blank or frozen?
- That's the player — see the restart guide
- All screens out at once → ring us
Last reviewed 25 July 2026. For step-by-step product instructions the PixelSuite Help Centre is the authority and is kept current with the software — this page is the venue-practical layer on top of it. Compliance requirements are your club's to confirm with its compliance manager and regulator.
Screens gone stale?
We'll take them off your hands.
Send us what's coming up and we'll design it, schedule it and retire it on time — so your screens are always current without anyone remembering to check.