Digital signage system with a web panel and remote players

We manage a growing number of screens (TVs) across several physical locations and right now updating content is a manual nightmare with USB drives and trips between sites. We need a full digital signage system built from scratch: a central web panel where our team logs in, uploads content, groups it into playlists, and assigns what plays when on each screen. The panel should make it easy to group displays by location or zone so promotions go to one store and menu boards cycle in another — all without physical access to the hardware.

For content we need support for images and video: looping playlists, drag-to-reorder, and time-based scheduling (date ranges, specific dates, repeating weekly slots). Each screen runs a lightweight player that pulls its assigned playlist, caches media locally (so playback continues if the network drops), and reports its status back to the panel. Remote management is critical: see which players are online, restart and reassign them, change volume and orientation, and push content updates over the air. We care about a clean responsive admin interface and clear user roles because non-technical staff will use this system daily.

Please describe your experience with signage or CMS projects, your proposed tech stack, and how you'd handle offline playback and player monitoring. We're ready to start with a web player but want an architecture that scales to many devices.

— Central web panel: media library, playlists, drag-to-order
— Scheduling: date ranges, specific dates, repeating weekly slots, target screen and group
— Photo and video support with local caching for network resilience
— Remote player management: online status, restart, reassign, orientation and volume
— Roles for non-technical operators and responsive admin interface