Tag Archives: Smart TV

Next-gen TV apps

I recently started working for Simplestream creating their next generation TV UIs. Simplestream provide TV solutions for just about every Connected TV or Set Top Box device you can think of – including a turnkey solution for ingest, encoding and management of monetisation models.

What I do

Creating OTT apps for HbbTV / Smart TV and Set Top Box devices, using JavaScript / TypeScript / BBC TAL / React / Preact. Responsible for developing and maintaining the Hybrid TV product, coordinating software releases, balancing requests across over a dozen clients, coordinating with QA, optimising UX, ensuring a stable and performant UI from a single code base across hundreds of big screen devices from Freeview, Freely, Freesat, Samsung Tizen, LG webOS, YouView, Hisense VIDAA, Liberty Global Horizon, etc.

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How to allow insecure HTTP content in Chrome

So you’re working on a platform that doesn’t fully support https yet? Old Freeview and HbbTV Set Top Boxes, I’m looking at you. When testing your site/app via the browser (Chrome or Chromium-based MS Edge), you’ve noticed that it has recently started forcing every URL you type to https – even if you’ve followed the usual instructions? Read on…

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YouView – Smart TV UI

YouView is a Smart TV service in the UK, which runs on Set Top Boxes and Smart TVs. I worked on the original UI for years and thought I’d share some insights into best practices for building applications on such resource constrained devices.

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