What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile

Post by arethuza » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 2:49 PM UTC

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #26

embedding-shape wrote: post #4

I'd be curious why Amazon's Prime app has such horrible performance compared to literally every other streaming service, on WebOS at least (on a relatively recent LG OLED). They're all doing more or less the same thing, as far as I can tell as a user at least, yet just moving the focus around in Amazon's streaming app takes 0.5 second while it's instant in other apps. The bandwidth for actual streaming seems the same…

I'm still astonished how poorly optimized the YouTube app is/has always been on Apple TV. It's fucking wild how slow they can make it move about a bunch of rectangular icons, the same unit that can run honest to goodness videogames (if simple ones). Though I suppose my XBox Series X can run Halo Infinite at 4K/60hz (with a ton of asterisks) and still chokes on the main menu which is also coincidentally a bunch of rec…

Post by DanielHB » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

Post by somat » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 3:12 PM UTC

DanovonT wrote: post #5

I always found most tv apps have some performance issues. I've seen netflix, prime, even youtube crash, lag, or have some issues now and then that just made me think that maybe tvs are just not powerful. Don't even want to talk about Disney+, HBO, or Hulu. Then I got an appletv+ subscription, and was pleasantly surprised it performed far better, on an android tv even. I wonder if it's beyond just the company standard…

Post by herbturbo » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:38 PM UTC

dagmx wrote: post #36

embedding-shape wrote: post #4

I'd be curious why Amazon's Prime app has such horrible performance compared to literally every other streaming service, on WebOS at least (on a relatively recent LG OLED). They're all doing more or less the same thing, as far as I can tell as a user at least, yet just moving the focus around in Amazon's streaming app takes 0.5 second while it's instant in other apps. The bandwidth for actual streaming seems the same…

Amazon are bad at consumer software, with the exception perhaps of the kindle. Emphasis on consumer, because they have fantastic enterprise/cloud engineers. They have, frankly, some of the worst UI/UX design of any company in the same spaces that they exist in. Look at even their store listings, it’s a complete mess of information sprawled over the pages. They do not optimize for performance or have a culture of squa…

Post by JSR_FDED » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 5:21 PM UTC

dinko7 wrote: post #23

joenot443 wrote: post #16

I'm sorry Dinko, but this ain't it. > On TV, input works very differently. Users navigate with a remote. Movement is discrete. Every interaction requires intention. Each action is one step in a sequence. That difference changes everything. I just don't want to read articles that are written by LLMs. If there was something you earnestly learned that you think other engineers could benefit from, use your own words to t…

I write all my articles by hand for the first draft and the final polish. I do use LLMs in between to try to get a clearer message (to what I find appropriate). I understand if you don't want to read it, but there is nothing dishonest about this article. I've lived through what I wrote with those 3 apps. Take it as you wish and have a good day.