If you are setting up digital signage, one of the first questions is which device to buy. The good news is that both Amazon Fire TV and Android TV run OrbiSignage, both are inexpensive, and both will happily drive a screen all day. Here is how to choose between them.
The short answer
For most cafés, shops and gyms, an Amazon Fire TV Stick is the easiest and cheapest place to start. It is inexpensive, easy to find, and works well for a single screen. If you want a device that boots straight into your signage and recovers cleanly after a power cut, a dedicated Android TV box is often the more robust choice for always-on displays. Either way the OrbiSignage player is the same and your content looks identical.
Amazon Fire TV
Fire TV sticks are the most popular way to get started. They cost very little, plug straight into an HDMI port, and are available everywhere.
- Pros: cheap, widely available, simple to set up, great for a single screen or a quick trial.
- Watch out for: Fire TV is built for home entertainment, so you may need to adjust a few settings to keep it awake and stop it drifting back to the home screen. Our step-by-step setup guide walks through it.
Android TV
Android TV boxes range from budget models to commercial-grade players designed to run around the clock.
- Pros: more control over startup and power behaviour, better suited to unattended, always-on screens, and commercial models are built for continuous use.
- Watch out for: quality varies, so buy from a reputable brand rather than the cheapest listing you can find.
What actually matters for signage
Whichever you choose, the things that make signage reliable are the same:
- Auto-start, so the player launches on boot and after a power cut.
- Stable playback, that keeps running for weeks without a reboot.
- Offline-first content, so a dropped connection never blanks the screen.
OrbiSignage handles all three. The player restarts itself if it is closed, keeps itself on top, and plays media from local storage, so your screens stay live even when the internet does not. You can read why that matters in offline-first playback.
Our recommendation
Starting out or running a handful of screens? A Fire TV Stick is the quickest, cheapest way in. Rolling out across several sites or leaving screens on all day, every day? Choose a good Android TV box, ideally a commercial model. And if you would rather skip the shopping around, you can order pre-configured players from us, ready-paired so you just plug them in.
Either way, it just works
Both platforms download from the same place. Grab the player from our downloads page, pair with a six-digit code, and start publishing. You can try the whole thing free on up to three screens, with no card required.
The device is the easy part. The real value is in the software that keeps every screen updated, on-brand and never blank, and that works the same on Fire TV and Android TV alike.