By Alex Winchell
At Montarev, we take pride in helping businesses solve digital challenges—whether it’s a full-scale website, SEO strategy, or something as seemingly simple as a TV menu screen. Recently, I worked with 1Ō5 Brewing, a coffee shop and brewery in the Billings Heights, on a project that turned into a much bigger challenge than expected.
The owner needed digital menu screens for their TVs but wanted to avoid spending thousands on commercial signage solutions. He also wanted full creative control over the design, which meant a simple plug-and-play solution wouldn’t cut it.
We created some really cool chalkboard-style digital menus that everyone loved. But then came the real challenge: getting them to display properly on the TVs.
The Initial Attempts
My first approach was straightforward: load the 4K PNG image files onto a flash drive and play them directly on the TVs. Simple, right? Well, not quite. The problem was that the owner had purchased Hisense TVs, which wouldn’t display the images in full 4K resolution—they capped the playback at 1080p. That downgrade made the detailed coffee recipe diagrams blurry and hard to read, so this solution was a no-go.
From there, I went down a rabbit hole of trying different methods to get high-quality images displayed properly. Here’s what I tried:
- 4K Video Instead of Images – I converted the menus into a 4K video and loaded that onto the flash drive. The TV would play the video in 4K, but every time the loop restarted, the screen would go black, flash the file name, and overlay player controls. Not ideal.
- Amazon Fire TV Photos App – I tried using the built-in media player and Amazon Photos app to display the images. Neither worked reliably.
- Roku & Google Photo View App – I convinced the owner to swap out the TVs for Roku devices instead of buying entirely new screens. This got me closer to a solution. Using an app called Google Photo View, I was able to display the images, but after about two hours, the Roku would return to the home screen. I fought with every setting on the Roku and TV—turning off power-saving modes, screensaver settings, and bandwidth-saving features—but nothing worked to keep the images up indefinitely.
At this point, the staff was manually turning the TVs back on every time they reverted to the home screen. That wasn’t a long-term fix, so I kept searching.
Finding the Best Workable Solution
I reached out to 1Ō5 Brewing’s IT company, TelNet in Billings, to explore setting up a media server. My idea was to host the image files on a networked drive and stream them directly to the TVs. But after diving into their network setup, I realized I would need an external device to act as the media server. Since I didn’t have one on hand, this solution wasn’t feasible either.
Just when I was about to give up, I started flipping through the Amazon Fire TV app library and came across an app called AbleSign. It had solid reviews, so I decided to give it a shot.
To my surprise, it worked seamlessly. The app allowed me to upload images and videos through a web interface, sync them remotely, and most importantly, it stayed on without timing out or returning to a home screen. It was simple, effective, and best of all, free.
After trying so many different approaches, this turned out to be the most practical solution for 1Ō5 Brewing’s menu screens. If you’re dealing with a similar challenge, it’s worth exploring different digital signage options—sometimes, the best solution isn’t the most expensive one. Hopefully, this helps save someone else the time and frustration I went through!
