When using Fugo's Android player you are given a choice in the player's settings: whether to use “Native“ or “HTML5” video playback. If you have a top-spec Android Media Player, chances are you don’t even need to worry about this, and your video will play seamlessly with our app. However, if you want to save some money you might opt for a slightly less performant player and this might cause some video playback issues.

If you have just one screen or you are running a large digital signage network on Android devices, it is important to know how to best maximize your device performance to achieve the best results. This will require some technical knowledge that we have broken down below for you in easy to digest sections:

At Fugo, we use HTML to build content for players as it provides a rich and standardized platform for playing engaging and complex ads for digital signage.

In order to play web content on Android, Fugo uses the Web-View component, which is like a full-screen browser opened in an android app without any of the usual browser UI, search bar or tabs, etc.

The Web-View component uses the underlying browser engine that is available on the device. This allows you to create complex content, such as split video screens or have a video background playing behind a complex html page. In short, HTML content combined with with HTML5 video playback offers multi-layered video playback and boasts a truly professional spec result.

Here's an example of the kind of layered HTML5 video content you can display with Fugo CMS:

Unfortunately, the video playback can be limited to the media formats and codecs available on the device you are using. In other words, if a video is not playing as expected on your Android device, it's most likely because there is currently no media format or codec available to support your chosen video on your media device. In our experience, this problem usually occurs on less powerful or older Android OS versions and media devices.

In addition to this, HTML5 video playback can decrease a player's performance, as running the HTML5 player inside a Web-View component needs more processing power than using a full native player.

If you experience video playback problem on your Android device we suggest you switch to Native playback. This should resolve your playback issues as it uses the Native Android video player which is much more efficient and supports most video formats.

You can change between HTML5 and Native Player in the Player Settings page for your screen in Fugo CMS:

The only downside to using the Native Video setting is that you are not able to create ‘complex’ video content like you are with HTML5 video.

We hope you found this information helpful but if you have any questions please contact us at support@fugo.ai