* Make a BrightSign say what it is running, and what it is plugged into
A panel on a wall could not answer three questions an operator asks first:
which version am I, which page am I running, and which screen is that. All
three had answers already travelling over the socket; nothing was reading them.
VERSION. device_info.app_version was the literal '1.1.0-web' for every web
player, BrightSign included — the same string as PLAYER_VERSION, which already
travels separately as client_version. So the column carried no information at
all: a panel provisioned this morning and one running a year-old host reported
identically. app_version is now the ON-DEVICE host package, the artifact OTA
replaces and the only one here that can be stale, and PLAYER_VERSION is stamped
at serve time from VERSION rather than being a constant nobody bumped for the
whole 1.x line. No '-web' suffix: client_version is only compared for equality
today, but X.Y.Z-web is a semver PRERELEASE that sorts BELOW X.Y.Z, and this
project has been bitten by exactly that before.
The host version arrives asynchronously and can land after the page registers,
so register sends what it has and the heartbeat corrects the record — which also
catches the version changing under a live page, which is what a self-update is.
THE CARD SHOWED FOR NOBODY. The Info tab's version card sat inside the block
gated on android_version && !startsWith('Web/'). A BrightSign registers as
"Web/<ua>", so the panel that most needed a version never displayed one.
THE PAD THAT COULD NOT BE CLICKED. System View was gated on tier === 2. tier is
an Android device-owner concept, NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, written only by the APK —
so a BrightSign or Tizen panel sat at 0 forever and rendered HOME, BACK, POWER,
the D-pad and OK permanently pointer-events:none, for keys those players
genuinely handle. Greying an Android gate over a working control is the "button
that cannot work" the capability system exists to prevent, inverted. Only
Recents (KEYCODE_APP_SWITCH) and Settings are truly Android-only; those are now
the only things hidden.
THE PACKAGE POINTED AT THE WRONG SERVER. autorun.zip carried the committed
default, so a player self-updating from alpha or a self-hosted box was handed a
config pointing at screentinker.com — which surfaces as a pairing bug, miles
from the packaging code that caused it. It is now stamped with the URL it was
fetched from. The bytes therefore vary per origin, so the cache is keyed by
origin and BOTH routes derive it identically: the manifest checksum and the
served bytes must come from one buffer or every player downloads, fails
verification and retries forever.
EDID. getEdidIdentity() answers seven questions and cannot answer any others —
manufacturer, EDID version, physical size, gamma and the mode lists exist only
in the raw block, which getEdid() returns as 2048 bytes. The player ships those
on the register (identity, not a reading: it changes when someone swaps the
screen) and the SERVER parses them. That split is the point: a new field becomes
a server deploy instead of a bridge update behind a 4h CDN plus an OTA for the
host. Verified against real hardware — an XT245 with a CX101 decodes to RTK /
0x1010 / serial 1 / 2020w26 / 22x13cm, preferred 1920x1200@62, matching the
player's own DWS field for field. The odd-looking 62 is right: 168.5MHz over
2200 x 1245 is 61.5Hz, and rounding it to a nicer 60 would contradict the panel.
Also corrects two comments that had outgrown their reasoning: the BrightSign
capability baseline still explained its exclusions with "a canvas cannot read
the video plane", which native capture made obsolete, and player-parity.md
claimed the bridge is "always current" when a zone-wide Cloudflare Browser Cache
TTL had been rewriting its no-cache to max-age=14400 for months.
Every new guard is mutation-tested — the fix was reverted in the source and each
test confirmed to fail. 1676 -> 1714 tests, all green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014kfhrUPit5MCqxeTQyqr56
* Run the ScreenTinker server on the player it serves
A BrightSign XT245 now downloads, installs and runs the server itself, with
the display showing what it is doing until it is up.
WHY IT NEEDED A NEW SHAPE
BrightSignOS cannot open a large autorun.zip. The 73MB build failed at boot
with "ZipArchive error at line 91", and the OS renamed it autorun.zip_invalid
- which is how a device that had already unpacked once came back up with no
autorun at all. The identical package cut to 32KB and five files boots fine;
paths (182 chars) and depth (8) are unremarkable, so the limit is in the
boot-time reader, not the archive. BrightSign's own notes acknowledge package
size as a problem and point at webpack; that route needs the dynamic requires
in scripts/ removed first, so instead autorun.zip carries only what starts the
process and the payload arrives over HTTP into a Node that has no such limit.
The payload can also be updated without re-provisioning the device.
WHY roNodeJs AND NOT THE WIDGET
The first version ran the server inside an roHtmlWidget with nodejs_enabled.
That is a Node context inside an Electron renderer, and it is not Node. Four
separate boot failures came out of it, each invisible to a local test because
a local test runs on real Node:
- shebangs are not stripped, so any `#!/usr/bin/env node` file dies with
"Failed to construct 'ContextifyScript': Invalid or unexpected token".
Note it names no token - "#" is not one. An ESM file compiled as CJS says
"Unexpected token 'export'" instead, which is how the two are told apart.
- require() of an ESM-only package is unsupported, which plain Node 24
handles. uuid 14 is ESM-only and 21 files import it.
- setInterval is the DOM's and returns a NUMBER, so setInterval(...).unref()
throws. Two call sites were unguarded; sixteen more were written
defensively and had been silently not unreffing.
- worker_threads cannot create a thread at all.
BrightSign's dev-cookbook is explicit: roNodeJs "for long running processes
like ... running a web server", roHtmlWidget "for browser-based apps". Their
cra-template examples do exactly this - server in roNodeJs, widget pointed at
localhost. It also fixes the lifecycle problem that was the original argument
against a server on this hardware: in a widget the server dies with the page,
taking an open SQLite WAL with it.
The shims for the first three are kept in the packager for now rather than
removed in the same change that moves the container, so that if something
breaks it is the move and not four simultaneous removals.
CHANGES THAT ARE NOT BRIGHTSIGN-SPECIFIC
db/database.js, routes/status.js fs.copyFileSync does not merely copy
bytes: it fchmods the destination to match the source. exFAT has no
permission bits, so the pre-migration snapshot failed with EPERM and the
failure path called process.exit(1) - which inside a widget also killed
the page, leaving a black screen and no diagnostic. The guard was right;
the copy was wrong. lib/fsutil.js copies without touching mode.
db/wal-checkpointer.js the module already degraded correctly when its
worker died or could not be respawned, but the FIRST spawn was not
wrapped, so a host that cannot make threads lost the whole server rather
than falling back to inline autocheckpoint.
db/sqlite-compat.js a better-sqlite3 facade over node:sqlite. With it the
bundle contains no native code at all, which is what lets an x86_64
laptop build a package for an aarch64 player. 1719/1719 tests pass on
Node 24 through this shim.
The packager refuses to build if a source file is untracked (git ls-files
decides what ships, and lib/fsutil.js reached a player without shipping
alongside the code that required it), if any .node binary is present, if a
shebang survives, or if a database, upload, cert or .env is staged - the first
build of this package swept up a real 33MB database and 105MB of uploads.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014kfhrUPit5MCqxeTQyqr56
---------
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: Dan Walters <dan.walters@bytetinker.net>
32 KiB
Player parity matrix
What each player can actually do, verified against the code rather than assumed. This is the document that says where the remaining work is, so a wrong "yes" here is worse than a missing row: it puts a control on the dashboard that cannot work.
Capability names come from server/lib/player-capabilities.js. Players declare their own set at
registration; a player that declares nothing falls back to the per-platform baseline in that file.
Legend — ✅ verified in source · ⚠️ partial/conditional (reason given) · ❌ not supported (reason given) · 💀 dead: the capability is declared or baselined but the control cannot work · ❓ unverifiable from source — needs hardware, and is marked as such rather than asserted.
BrightSign runs the same server/player/index.html as the browser, so it differs only where the
autorun.brs host bridge adds something the browser cannot reach. The bridge has two halves: the
JS (brightsign/st-bridge.js, served by us at /player/st-bridge.js — always current, but see the
CDN note below) and the
on-device BrightScript that must create the widget with nodejs_enabled:true. BS.hasHost() is
false unless BOTH are present, and everything host-backed hangs off it.
CDN note. "Always current" was false in the hosted deployment for months. The origin sets
Cache-Control: no-cacheon/player/*deliberately (server/server.js), but Cloudflare's zone-wide Browser Cache TTL (14400s) rewrote it tomax-age=14400for static extensions, so every player held a 4-hour-stale bridge on device — and purging the edge did not help, because the TTL was a browser directive. A new-page-against-old-bridge skew is exactly what makesBS.<method>()throw and a display self-report as crashed. Fixed 2026-08-14 by a cache rule on(http.request.uri.path eq "/player") or starts_with(http.request.uri.path, "/player/")settingbrowser_ttl: respect_origin— edge caching is retained (it revalidates), only the browser directive is corrected. If this behaviour ever returns, check that rule before debugging code.
Verified at 2237eda. Where a row cites "the fielded build" it means v1.9.28 — the last release
before any player declared anything, and therefore the build every baseline is describing.
🔴 Read this first: three dead controls found by this audit
These are not gaps in coverage. They are controls a customer can press today that do nothing.
1. The volume slider works on Android only
frontend/js/views/device-detail.js sends set_volume as { level: 0..1 }:
el?.addEventListener('change', () => sendCommand(device.id, cmd, { level: parseInt(el.value, 10) / 100 }));
| player | what the handler reads | result |
|---|---|---|
| Android | payload.optDouble("level", -1.0) |
✅ works |
| web | payload.level (fraction), value still read as a percentage |
✅ fixed in 1.9.31 |
| Tizen | payload.level (fraction) |
✅ fixed in 1.9.31 — but see the note below on when the baseline may move |
| BrightSign | (the web player) | ✅ as web |
Three of the four players had a complete, working volume implementation that could not be driven,
because nobody checked the payload key against the sender. Fixed in 1.9.31: the fraction is now
canonical everywhere, and the scale is chosen by WHICH KEY arrived rather than by the magnitude of
the number (1 is legal under both conventions, so guessing from the value is wrong for somebody).
audio.volume is back in the web and brightsign baselines as of 1.9.31, and not in the
tizen one. That asymmetry is the model, not an oversight — see
When a baseline may move.
2. Every #161 Tier-2 command was refused for the entire fleet — FIXED here
lock_now, power_menu, status_bar, block_uninstall and unblock_uninstall were gated on
system.device_owner. No player declares that name — not PlayerCapabilities.kt, not
tizen/js/capabilities.js, not declaredCapabilities(), not st-bridge.js — and no baseline
granted it. So supports() returned false for every device on every platform and all five commands
were refused, including on the device-owner panels the whole feature was built for. The dashboard
still drew the buttons, because device-detail.js gates that block on device.tier === 2 || too,
so an operator on a real owner panel pressed "Lock now" and got a silent server-side refusal.
Fixed in player-capabilities.js: those five now accept system.device_owner or
system.kiosk. That is an exact stand-in, not a loose one — PlayerCapabilities.kt declares
system.kiosk under if (isOwner) and nothing else, which is precisely when STPolicy's owned()
actions do anything, and no non-Android player declares it.
Follow-up owned by Android: PlayerCapabilities.kt should declare system.device_owner under
if (isOwner), at which point the stand-in becomes redundant.
3. The capture bootstrap required the capability it creates — half FIXED here
enable_system_capture raises Android's MediaProjection consent dialog: it is how a panel gains
full-screen capture. It was gated on remote.screenshot, so the only panel that needs it — no
accessibility, no projection grant, therefore no declared remote.screenshot — was the one panel
that could not be sent it. The command is now ungated.
Still broken, and it is a frontend change: device-detail.js renders the button behind
can('remote.screenshot'), so it is still hidden on exactly those panels.
Playback
No command routes to any playback.* capability and no dashboard control is gated on one, so these
describe content rendering. They are informational, and shown to the operator in the Info tab.
| capability | Android | Web | Tizen | BrightSign |
|---|---|---|---|---|
playback.video |
✅ ExoPlayer (MediaPlayerManager) |
✅ <video> |
✅ AVPlay | ✅ hardware plane |
playback.image |
✅ ImageLoader |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
playback.widget |
✅ WebView | ✅ iframe | ✅ iframe | ✅ iframe |
playback.youtube |
✅ WebView embed | ✅ IFrame API | ✅ iframe embed | ✅ IFrame API |
playback.zones |
✅ ZoneManager |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
playback.transitions |
✅ TransitionCompositor |
⚠️ declared only when the bundle loads (transitionRuntimeReady()) — a failed load hard-cuts rather than breaking playback |
✅ transitions.js |
⚠️ composites DOM over video; with hwz it may be invisible over video and degrade to a hard cut |
playback.pip |
✅ PipOverlay |
✅ #pipContainer |
✅ pip-overlay.js |
⚠️ same hwz caveat as transitions |
Audio
| capability | Android | Web | Tizen | BrightSign |
|---|---|---|---|---|
audio.mute |
✅ device:mute-changed → setVideoMuted, incl. YouTube via the IFrame bridge |
✅ | ✅ incl. YouTube via postMessage |
✅ as web |
audio.volume |
✅ set_volume reads payload.level |
✅ reads payload.level (1.9.31) |
✅ applyVolume reads payload.level (1.9.31, incl. tizen.tvaudiocontrol) |
✅ as web |
Display
| capability | Android | Web | Tizen | BrightSign |
|---|---|---|---|---|
display.rotation |
✅ native rootView.rotation — the ExoPlayer surface rotates with it |
✅ CSS transform | ✅ CSS + AVPlay setDisplayRotation for video |
⚠️ CSS cannot turn the hardware video plane; the host would have to (roVideoMode), and the page never calls BS.setVideoMode |
display.power |
⚠️ conditional. screen_off needs owner / device-admin FORCE_LOCK / accessibility; screen_on is a wake lock, which works anywhere — but only since 812e89f. On the fielded build screen_on is a logged no-op, which is why the Android baseline no longer claims this |
❌ a browser tab cannot power a panel — the overlay only paints black | ✅ both halves on every build, no signing needed: showScreenOff() / clearScreenOff(), plus the real panel API where STDeviceControl finds one |
⚠️ needs hasHost(). Media teardown always blanks; ❓ CEC is unverified — our XT245 resolves @brightsign/cec while the kernel logs failed to get cec clock and the display never responds |
display.resolution |
❌ needs system/root | ❌ not addressable from a browser | ❌ no web-accessible mode setting on the TV profile | ⚠️ declared but unreachable — st-bridge.js exposes setVideoMode, the page never calls it, and no command maps to this capability |
display.brightness (per-window dim, Tier 0) |
✅ set_brightness → setWindowBrightness, no privilege needed |
❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
⚠️ PlayerCapabilities.kt does not declare display.brightness, though MainActivity handles
set_brightness unconditionally. So an updated Android panel loses the per-window dim slider that
an un-updated one keeps via the baseline. See gap 2.
Remote view and control
| capability | Android | Web | Tizen | BrightSign |
|---|---|---|---|---|
remote.screenshot |
⚠️ captureView always (a real frame of the player's own view); full-screen only with accessibility or MediaProjection. Declared only for the full-screen path |
⚠️ canvas only — same-origin content, and the alpha probe rejects frames where no pixels arrived | ⚠️ captureAndSend captures images only; video and YouTube get an honest status card reading "Live preview unavailable for video / YouTube on Tizen" |
⚠️ st-bridge.js gates host framebuffer capture on primary storage; without a disk it falls back to canvas, which cannot read the video plane |
remote.stream |
✅ | ✅ 1fps | ✅ 1s interval over captureAndSend, so the same image-only limit |
⚠️ as web |
remote.input |
✅ TouchInjector — plain dispatchTouchEvent, no privilege |
✅ | ✅ elementFromPoint().click() + D-pad/volume keys |
✅ synthesised DOM events, needs no host |
Lifecycle
| capability | Android | Web | Tizen | BrightSign |
|---|---|---|---|---|
system.restart_player |
✅ launch / refresh |
✅ location.reload() |
✅ location.reload() via STDeviceControl |
⚠️ needs hasHost() so the host rebuilds the widget. A page-initiated reload does not reliably bring an roHtmlWidget back — that darkened a customer's panel on 2026-07-28, which is why neither st-bridge.js nor the baseline offers this without a host |
system.reboot |
⚠️ device owner only (STPolicy.reboot()). Off-owner it degrades to an accessibility power dialog, which needs someone at the screen |
❌ a browser tab cannot reboot its host | ⚠️ only on a partner-signed panel where STDeviceControl.capabilities().reboot is true |
⚠️ RebootSystem() via the host |
system.self_update |
✅ APK OTA (UpdateChecker), and update forces a check |
❌ the server deploys the player; there is nothing for it to update | ❌ a .wgt is installed by the panel, not the app |
💀 for the dashboard button. The host really does self-update — autorun.brs polls CheckPackageUpdate every PKG_CHECK_MS — but that is a host-side poll on a socket it is not listening to. The page declares system.self_update behind hasHost(), the dashboard renders "Force update", and index.html has no update branch at all. See gap 3 |
Device management
Android device-owner territory. Everything here is ❌ elsewhere for the same reason — no equivalent privilege model exists on those platforms — so the column is collapsed. Tizen and BrightSign both decline these explicitly and in writing in their own capability modules.
| capability | Android | Web / Tizen / BrightSign |
|---|---|---|
system.kiosk |
⚠️ owner-only. Off-owner startLockTask() is screen pinning, which prompts — unusable on a panel with no input |
❌ no device-owner concept |
system.brightness |
⚠️ WRITE_SETTINGS or owner (setSystemSetting) |
❌ |
system.screen_timeout |
⚠️ same gate as above | ❌ |
system.install_apk |
⚠️ owner or a foreign DPC that delegated the install scope | ❌ not an APK platform |
system.shell |
✅ declared unconditionally — it is an app-UID sh -c, not root, so it works at any tier. Handled in WebSocketService |
❌ |
system.time |
⚠️ owner-only | ❌ |
system.device_owner |
💀 declared by nobody. See the red section above | ❌ |
Synchronisation and resilience
| capability | Android | Web | Tizen | BrightSign |
|---|---|---|---|---|
sync.clock |
✅ GroupScheduleController |
✅ | ✅ syncedNow() + schedule-eval.js |
✅ as web |
sync.native |
❌ no native protocol | ❌ | ❌ | ⚠️ st-sync.js / SyncManager, gated on module presence and BOS 8.2.10+ (below the floor the module can resolve and silently do nothing, which on a wall means every panel reports healthy while drifting). ❓ unverified on hardware |
offline.cache |
✅ ContentCache + DownloadCoordinator, resumable (Range/If-Range), revision-keyed |
✅ service worker, resumable chunked prefetch, revision-keyed; declared only when a worker is genuinely controlling the page | ⚠️ js/media-cache.js caches media to wgt-private — new at HEAD, absent from the fielded build, and declared at runtime only where the platform grants storage |
❓ unverified. See gap 4 |
Where the four declaration sites disagree with each other
| Android | Web | Tizen | BrightSign | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| declaration site | telemetry/PlayerCapabilities.kt |
declaredCapabilities() in index.html |
js/capabilities.js |
index.html again |
⚠️ brightsign/st-bridge.js computeCapabilities() IS DEAD CODE. It is exported as
BS.capabilities, and nothing calls it: grep -n "BS\.[a-zA-Z]*(" server/player/index.html lists
23 bridge calls and capabilities is not among them. The BrightSign declaration actually comes
from the web player's declaredCapabilities(), and the two disagree substantially:
| capability | st-bridge.js says |
index.html actually declares |
which is right |
|---|---|---|---|
offline.cache |
navigator.serviceWorker exists |
a worker is controlling the page | index.html. The bridge's version is the exact lie that shipped on the XT245 |
remote.screenshot |
needs probe.storage_present |
any 2d canvas | the bridge. A canvas cannot read the video plane |
remote.stream |
needs probe.storage_present |
unconditional | the bridge |
system.self_update |
needs probe.storage_present |
needs hasHost() |
the bridge — staging autorun.zip needs a volume |
display.rotation |
needs a host (roVideoMode) |
unconditional (CSS) | the bridge, for video |
display.power |
needs CecClass |
needs hasHost() |
roughly equivalent |
display.resolution |
host or VideoOutputClass |
needs hasHost() |
the bridge |
system.restart_player |
needs a host | unconditional | the bridge — see the 2026-07-28 incident |
sync.native |
module and OS ≥ 8.2.10 | ScreenTinkerBSSync.available(), which is module presence only |
the bridge. index.html skips the firmware floor |
server/test/brightsign-capabilities.test.js is 199 lines of thorough tests for this dead
function. Every one passes, and none of them constrains what a BrightSign actually declares. That
is worse than no coverage: it reads as proof.
The fix is small and belongs to whoever owns those files — have declaredCapabilities() return
BS.capabilities() when BS.isBrightSign(), and the storage/firmware gating that was already
written and tested starts being true.
Real gaps worth closing
Prioritised by how visible the failure is to an operator.
Gaps 1, 2 and 5 are closed (gap 1 shipped in 1.9.31; 2 and 5 are on
fix/player-parity-small-gaps and unreleased). ⚠️ The baselines below have deliberately NOT been
moved — per the rule in this document a baseline entry moves when the fix reaches displays,
which is the release AFTER the one carrying it. Moving them together would grant a capability to
every panel still running the old build.
⚠️ Gaps 3 and 4 were implemented, audited, and REVERTED. Both are still open, and both are now known to be considerably more expensive than "small". Their rows record what the audit found, so the next attempt starts from the traps rather than rediscovering them.
| # | gap | difficulty | why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ✅ set_volume payload mismatch (server/player/index.html, tizen/js/app.js) — accept level (0..1) alongside value (0..100). |
trivial — one line each | The volume slider is dead on 3 of 4 players. Highest visibility, lowest cost in the list. Fixed and released in 1.9.31 (volumeLevelFromCommand()). |
| 2 | ✅ PlayerCapabilities.kt under-declares. Add display.brightness (Tier 0, setWindowBrightness, always available) and system.device_owner under if (isOwner). |
trivial | Updating an Android panel currently loses it the per-window dim slider, and keeps the Tier-2 stand-in in player-capabilities.js necessary. Fixed — both declared; the system.kiosk stand-in can retire one release after this ships. The gap was wider than written: remote.screenshot and remote.stream were gated on the accessibility service while captureScreen() falls through to ScreenshotCapture.captureView, a plain view draw with no permission check — so a Tier-0 panel lost live view and screenshots by updating, and a granted MediaProjection never became a capability at all (nothing re-declares on consent, so the operator granted it, capture started, and the server went on refusing). Both are now unconditional, matching the baseline's own reasoning. display.power remains conditional on purpose — see the DELIBERATE list in player-parity-baselines.test.js. |
| 3 | ❌ REVERTED — BrightSign "Force update" is a dead button. index.html has no update branch; the host self-updates on its own poll. |
NOT small — needs host work first | Wiring the button to CheckPackageUpdate was tried and withdrawn. The update path is synchronous and unbounded (no SetTimeout on either transfer), so a slow failing download blocks the message loop past WATCHDOG_MS (120s), fabricating a crash event and rebuilding the widget. Worse, MAX_ATTEMPTS_PER_VERSION is 3 and the counter carries no version binding, so three presses on a bad link refuse that panel every future version until someone clears the registry by hand. cfg.self_update is not in the probe payload either, so an opted-out fleet shows a button guaranteed to do nothing while the dashboard toasts success — and update is allowed as a group broadcast, so one click can start N synchronous downloads. Prerequisites: a transfer timeout under the watchdog, a version-bound (or manual-exempt) attempt counter, a result message so the toast can tell the truth, and self_update in the probe. Until then, withdrawing the claim is the cheaper honest fix. |
| 4 | ❌ REVERTED — declaredCapabilities() should defer to BS.capabilities() on BrightSign. |
NOT small — the bridge's list is not a superset | Deferring wholesale was tried and withdrawn: the two lists disagree in both directions. The bridge gates remote.screenshot/remote.stream on storage_present alongside system.self_update, but that reasoning is stale — the player captures via @brightsign/screenshot into RAM (/tmp) and falls back to canvas, so both work with no disk and deferring removes working controls. Only system.self_update is genuinely storage-gated. The bridge also declares playback.transitions unconditionally, where the page checks transitionRuntimeReady() — an over-declare on the one platform where the UMD/nodejs_enabled collision silently kills transitions. And offline.cache gets looser, not stricter: the bridge omits the page's swRegistrationFailed check. Compounding all of it, probeHost's 3s timeout sets answered = true, so a late probe-result is discarded for the page's lifetime — and autorun.brs runs a blocking update check before entering the message loop, making a >3s answer plausible. A correct fix is a per-capability MERGE, not a wholesale hand-off, plus fixing the probe timeout. |
| 5 | ✅ The capture-bootstrap button is hidden where it is needed (device-detail.js, can('remote.screenshot')). |
small | Server-side gating is fixed; the UI half is not. Fixed via isAndroidDevice(), mirroring platformFamily() in server/lib/player-capabilities.js — all four signals in the same order, since a Tizen TV registers android_version: 'Tizen 6.5' and an Android-test-only helper classifies every Samsung panel as Android. ⚠️ The gate is Android-and-nothing-else, not "Android that lacks remote.screenshot": /api/devices/:id ships capabilitiesFor(), which flattens declared and baseline into one array, and the android baseline contains remote.screenshot — so that condition hides the button from all ~440 undeclared panels. The dashboard cannot currently distinguish "declared" from "baseline-filled" at all; if a future gate needs that, the API must expose the raw declaration. |
| 6 | Tizen remote.screenshot is images-only. Video and YouTube return a status card. AVPlay has no readable surface for a canvas. |
hard, possibly impossible | Honest today, but an operator checking a video panel gets a card instead of a picture. |
| 7 | BrightSign transitions/PiP over video. DOM composited over a hwz hardware plane may be invisible. The likely fix is roVideoMode.SetGraphicsZOrder("front"), deliberately not applied blind. |
medium, ❓ needs hardware | Changing z-order blind risks hiding video entirely on a player that currently works. |
| 8 | BrightSign offline caching is unproven either way. See below. | ❓ needs hardware |
The BrightSign offline.cache question, stated honestly
A real XT245 on alpha exposes navigator.serviceWorker, and then never even fetches sw.js:
registration is refused, so there is no worker, no content cache and no offline playback. That unit
runs BSN Supervisor (autorun.createdby = Supervisor 2.1.18.3) rather than our
brightsign/autorun.brs, and Supervisor's widget has no storage_path — the setting our own host
script does set (storage_path: "/cache", storage_quota: "1073741824") and the precondition for a
widget having persistent storage at all.
So this is very likely a widget CONFIG issue rather than a platform limit. It is unverified: no
one has yet watched a player running our package register a worker. Until someone has, this
document does not claim it, the brightsign baseline does not grant it, and the player declares it
only when a worker is genuinely in control — a refused registration reports
app_error/sw_unavailable to the server rather than a console.warn on a display nobody has a
console for.
Correctly impossible — do not "fix" these
system.rebooton web. No API exists. A browser tab rebooting its host would be a browser vulnerability.display.poweron web. The overlay is the honest maximum; the panel stays lit.- Device management off Android. No equivalent privilege model exists on Tizen or BrightSign, and a web player has no device to manage.
system.self_updateon web. The player is the deployment; there is nothing to update.sync.nativeoff BrightSign. It is BrightSign's own protocol, and the clock-derived one is the cross-platform answer that already works everywhere.display.resolutionoff BrightSign. No other platform exposes mode setting to an app.
Baselines: what an un-updated display is assumed to be able to do
~446 fielded displays declare nothing and fall back to BASELINE in
server/lib/player-capabilities.js. Because v1.9.29 is the first build in which any player
declares anything, every display reading a baseline is running v1.9.28 or older by construction
— so each entry below is justified against git show v1.9.28:<player source>, not against HEAD.
server/test/player-parity-baselines.test.js pins these to the player sources.
Corrections made in this pass
| baseline | change | evidence |
|---|---|---|
android |
removed display.power |
v1.9.28 MainActivity: "screen_on" -> Log.w("no privileged wake path on a non-rooted panel — no-op"). The ON half is dead on 100% of fielded panels, and one capability renders both buttons. |
android |
removed system.reboot |
STPolicy.reboot() requires device owner; off-owner v1.9.28 shows the accessibility power dialog — which on the accessibility-enabled panels common in this fleet paints that dialog over the signage. Owner provisioning is unreleased (#161 / PR #168 still open), so "device owner AND pre-1.9.29" is effectively an empty set. |
tizen |
added display.power |
v1.9.28 app.js implements both halves with no signing and no panel API: showScreenOff() / clearScreenOff() + keepAwake(). Unlike Android, neither half is privilege-gated. Withholding it hid a working control on every Tizen panel. |
web |
removed audio.volume, then RESTORED it in 1.9.31 |
Removed when v1.9.28 index.html contained the string set_volume zero times. Restored once the handler landed — this player is served by the server, so there is no fielded build to lag behind. |
brightsign |
removed display.power, system.reboot, system.restart_player, offline.cache (and audio.volume, restored in 1.9.31 with web) |
All five need a host bridge (hasHost()) or a service worker that a Supervisor-built widget refuses. system.restart_player is the 2026-07-28 panel-blackout path. offline.cache is the documented lie this whole model exists to stop. |
When a baseline may move
A baseline describes what an un-updated display can do, so the question "has this shipped?" has two different answers depending on how the player reaches the screen.
Served by the server — web, brightsign. The player is a document this server hands out. A
display running against this build is running this build's player; there is no such thing as a
browser panel stuck on last release's. So the baseline moves the moment the server ships the fix,
and holding it back hides a control that already works. test/player-parity-baselines.test.js
judges these two against the working tree, in both directions.
Shipped as a device artifact — android, tizen. The player is an APK or a .wgt sitting on
the panel. Cutting a release puts nothing on any screen; a panel updates when somebody updates it,
and this repo cannot know how many are still back on which build. These are judged against the
previous release, and only in the over-claim direction: "the baseline claims it, so the shipped
player had better implement it" is always worth failing on, while "HEAD gained the handler, so add
it to the baseline" is a guess about the fleet, not a fact about it. A panel that HAS updated
declares its own capabilities and never reads the baseline at all.
The cost of the one-directional rule is that a stale entry can sit here after the artifact really
has reached the fleet. That is a judgement call about panels, so a person makes it in
server/lib/player-capabilities.js and records why — which is what the Tizen audio.volume note
there is doing right now.
This distinction was learned the hard way. The test used to read "shipped" as the newest tag, which is HEAD on a release commit — so tagging 1.9.31 flipped every biconditional at once and demanded a baseline change for displays that could not possibly have the fix yet. The build went red naming a baseline, with nothing in the diff to explain it.
Consequence, deliberately accepted
server/services/scheduler.js gates the nightly scheduled reboot on system.reboot. Removing it
from the Android baseline means scheduled reboots now no-op for undeclared Android panels
instead of logging scheduled reboot fired for a panel that never rebooted. That log line is the
stated reason the gate exists; skipping is the honest answer, and an owner panel on v1.9.29+
declares system.reboot for itself and is unaffected.
The resulting baselines
| capability | android | tizen | brightsign | web |
|---|---|---|---|---|
playback.* (all 7) |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
audio.mute |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
audio.volume |
✅ | ❌ the fielded .wgt has no handler |
✅ since 1.9.31 (runs the served player) | ✅ since 1.9.31 |
display.rotation |
✅ | ✅ | ⚠️ graphics only | ✅ |
display.power |
❌ screen_on is a no-op |
✅ | ❌ needs host | ❌ |
display.brightness |
✅ Tier 0, since v1.9.10 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
remote.screenshot / remote.stream |
✅ view capture | ✅ images only | ✅ native capture, see note | ✅ |
remote.input |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
system.restart_player |
✅ | ✅ | ❌ widget may not return | ✅ |
system.self_update |
✅ | ❌ | ❌ needs host | ❌ |
system.reboot |
❌ owner-only | ❌ | ❌ needs host | ❌ |
sync.clock |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
offline.cache |
✅ | ❌ playlist JSON only | ❌ ❓ unverified | ✅ |
Note on BrightSign capture. The table used to read "❌ no video plane", on the reasoning that a
DOM canvas cannot read the hardware plane a hwz player puts video on. That is still true of the
canvas, but it is no longer the path taken: st-bridge.js captureScreen() uses the native
@brightsign/screenshot module, which composites both planes. Confirmed on hardware (XT245,
BrightSignOS 10.0.16); the module's API is unchanged between OS 9 and 10 — syncCapture /
asyncCapture with destinationFileName, and fileName still honoured as an alias. It needs
require() (i.e. nodejs_enabled:true) but not BS.hasHost(), so it works on widgets with no
messageport. On a widget with no node integration at all — one built by the BSN Supervisor — the
path really does fall back to canvas, and there the player now paints "Video is playing on the
hardware plane and cannot be captured" instead of a silent black frame. The baseline still
withholds both because it cannot tell those two widget kinds apart; every player that runs our page
declares them for itself regardless.
Everything conditional at runtime on every platform that has it at all — system.kiosk,
system.brightness, system.screen_timeout, system.install_apk, system.shell, system.time,
system.device_owner, sync.native, display.resolution — is absent from every baseline, and
a test enforces that.
What is tested, and what cannot be
server/test/player-parity-baselines.test.js reads the player sources and fails when they and the
claims disagree:
- every baseline and command-map name is in the vocabulary, and no baseline has duplicates;
- the dead-button rule — every gated command has a branch in some player;
- the unreachable-capability rule — every gating capability is either declared by some player's
source or granted by some baseline. This is the test that would have caught the
system.device_ownerbug; - a device-owner Android panel can actually be sent all five Tier-2 commands, and an ordinary one is still refused them by name;
audio.volumeandoffline.cacheare biconditional against the player sources, so a fix in a player fails the test until the baseline is updated;- no baseline claims a conditional capability, and the BrightSign baseline claims nothing behind
hasHost(); - every capability-shaped string quoted in any player is one the server knows — the server's parser drops unknown names, so a typo silently removes a control rather than raising anything.
Not testable from source, and asserted nowhere: whether CEC reaches a real display; whether a
widget built by our own autorun.brs is permitted to register a service worker; whether SyncManager
genuinely holds a wall in frame lock; whether transitions and PiP are visible over a hwz video
plane. Each is marked ❓ above and needs hardware.