Television is not a bigger phone. The only input is a D-pad remote, the viewer is three metres away, and every store reviews the app by hand. We build for those constraints from the first screen — focus model, large type, video playback, DRM and certification on five platforms.
A television app has one input: four directions and an OK button, held by someone sitting across the room. Every screen has to answer two questions at all times — where is the focus now, and where does it go when the viewer presses right. We design that as a real spatial navigation map before any layout work, because a focus ring that gets stuck in a corner or skips a row is the fault viewers notice in the first ten seconds. Type is sized to read from three metres, contrast is raised, and the safe area is respected so nothing important lands on the edge that older sets crop.
Video is the other half of the work. We handle adaptive bitrate streaming over HLS and DASH, resume points, subtitle and audio track switching, and DRM where the content licence requires it — FairPlay on tvOS, Widevine on Android TV and Fire TV, PlayReady on Samsung and LG. All of it is tested on the hardware people actually own, which is usually a set bought four or five years ago with a slow processor and a fraction of the memory in a current phone. An app that feels instant on a development machine and takes eight seconds to open a catalogue on a real television has not been finished.
TV is a genuinely different discipline from mobile, and treating it as a resized phone app is the most common way these projects fail. There is no touch and no hover, so nothing can depend on a gesture, a long press or a tooltip. Store review is stricter and slower: Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung and LG each put a person in front of a real remote to check focus behaviour, the back button, playback controls and recovery from a dropped connection. Samsung and LG go further and run the build on their own certified device pool. We build against those checklists from week one instead of meeting them for the first time at submission.
Not every television app is a streaming service. The remote and the viewing distance are the same; what changes is who is watching and why the screen is on.
Catalogue browsing, continue-watching, live channels and pay-per-view events. Adaptive streaming, DRM and playback analytics are wired in together, so you can see what people finish and exactly where they drop out.
Product ranges, showreels, menus and property listings on the big screen, driven by the same catalogue your website already uses. One update, every screen, and no second content team keeping the television in sync by hand.
Menu boards, waiting-room displays and in-store screens that run unattended for months. Scheduled playlists, updates pushed from a browser, and a device that restarts into the right app on its own after a power cut.
The navigation model is settled before anyone writes a layout, because rebuilding focus after the fact means rebuilding the app.
We agree which devices ship first, then map every D-pad move on every screen. Ambiguity here becomes a rebuild later.
Week 1Full-size layouts reviewed on an actual television, not a laptop. Type, focus states and safe areas are signed off before code.
Weeks 2–3Weekly builds side-loaded onto real Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV and smart-TV hardware — including the slow older sets your audience owns.
Weeks 3–10Each store reviews separately. Samsung and LG run the build on their certified device pool, which adds weeks on top of Apple and Google.
Weeks 11–16The business logic and the API layer, yes — that is real saving and we plan for it. The interface, no. A phone app assumes touch targets, scrolling, hover and gestures. A TV app has four directions, an OK button and a viewer three metres away who cannot see a 14-pixel label. Shipping a stretched phone layout is the most common reason television apps get rejected in review and abandoned by viewers after one session. Budget for a new interface built on top of the data layer you already own.
It depends on who is watching. In India, Android TV and Fire TV cover most connected sets and streaming sticks and are the quickest to reach, so they usually go first. tvOS matters when your audience is already on iPhones and Apple TV boxes. Samsung Tizen and LG webOS reach millions of televisions with nothing plugged in at all, but they carry the longest certification cycle and their own SDK quirks, so we normally add them as a second release six to eight weeks after launch.
Only if your content licence requires it. Owned marketing footage, product catalogues, training material and in-house video do not need DRM, and adding it would only cost you money. Licensed film, television and sport almost always do, and the rights holder will name the systems — FairPlay for Apple, Widevine for Android TV and Fire TV, PlayReady for Samsung and LG. DRM brings a licence server, a recurring monthly cost and roughly two weeks of extra build time, so we settle the question during scoping rather than after the quote is signed.
It is slower and it is manual. A reviewer sits with a remote and checks that focus never gets stuck, that the back button always goes somewhere sensible, that playback controls respond, and that the app recovers when the network drops mid-stream. Samsung and LG go further again and run the build on their own certified device pool covering several model years. Plan on two to four weeks for certification per platform rather than the day or two a phone app takes, and expect at least one round of comments on the first submission.
Send us the platforms, the content and the deadline. You get a device list, a fixed price and a certification timeline back within two working days.