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RSS Reader for Digital Signage

RSS Reader

With the RSS reader plugin, you can embed content from external sites that publish data in a RSS feed.

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RSS feed is a format that is machine-readable, so our software can read the data and format it in a way it’s presentable on a screen.

Other digital signage RSS plugins: RSS Ticker, MediaRSS

* RSS – Really Simple Syndication (Wikipedia article on RSS)
  • Find RSS feed – Convenience functionality to help you find an RSS feed. If you can’t find the feed using our search, try using Google or contact the desired website maintainers and ask for an RSS feed URL.
  • Feed URL – An address to the RSS feed (We also support atom feeds).
  • Font – Select a font (you can upload your own font).
  • Alignment – The alignment applies to the text inside the plugin. We default to justify-content_,_ however depending on how long the text is and the size of the area, other options might be also viable.
  • Update interval – Specifies for how long a feed entry is shown.
  • Font zoom – As the plugin supports RSS standards, it can receive data in any format. Some sites generate feeds with long text descriptions, whereas others only include a few sentences. With the font zoom option, you can customize how much will the plugin enlarge the text to better fit in your defined area.
  • Show time ago – If enabled, the plugin will show how long ago the feed entry was published.
  • Locale – The locale for showing time ago.
  • Transition – Set the incoming transition effect for new entries.
  • Layout
    • Normal – text on the left, the image on the right (landscape) / image on top, text on the bottom (portrait)
    • Reverse – image on left, text on the right (landscape) / text on top, the image in the bottom (portrait)
    • Alternate – alternates between normal and reverse layout for feed entries.

I did not find my desired RSS feed using the search.

The RSS feed search is a convenient functionality, unfortunately, there is no standardized way for websites to publish and make their feeds searchable. The search has data for the most popular news outlets, however, we don’t have the feeds for all websites on the Internet. You can try using a search engine to find the feed URL or contact the website maintainers and ask them if they have a public RSS feed.

What happens if my player doesn’t have an Internet connection?

This plugin requires an Internet connection, otherwise, it will be hidden.

How often is the feed updated?

The plugin will fetch the feed every time it is shown. In case you have the plugin on a slide with a longer duration (for example in a zone with the “play forever” option), the plugin will also check for feed updates every 30 minutes.

What is the difference between MediaRSS feeds and RSS feeds?

Both are XML-formatted data structures and both can contain images, so differentiating them can be confusing. News sites and blogs often publish an RSS feed whereas paid content from 3rd party providers for digital signage is mostly MediaRSS.

RSS was not originally designed to contain media (images, videos), so there is no standardized location of where the image element is positioned in XML. This plugin looks at 6 locations in the XML structure to find if the entry contains an image, but it can be just text as well. The image in the RSS feed is typically a thumbnail,  meant to complement the text rather than be shown as full screen. MediaRSS was designed to address the shortcomings of RSS and each <item> contains the media inside <media:content> tag, so it’s always in one place and the media item is the core of the content (rather than a complementing thumbnail as in RSS). Another noteworthy difference is that the media items inside Media RSS contain a duration, so the feed itself defines how long each item is shown. To sum it up, media RSS can be considered as an RSS feed with a clearly defined image location and duration.

Alternative RSS feeds

RSS.app is a great alternative to our RSS Ticker as it provides a bunch of awesome feeds like Twitter, Google News, Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, Telegram, Pinterest, eBay, Tumblr, NYTimes, CNN, USA Today, BBC News, Washington Post, Vogue, CryptoCurrency News, Yahoo, Sky Sports, Reuters, Fox News, The New Yorker, ESPN, CBS Sports, NBC Sports, MLB.com, NHL.com, Sports Illustrated, CNN Business, CNET, TechRadar, World Health Organization, Al Jazeera and lots more.
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