Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile

dinkomarinac.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–49 of 49 posts

Re: What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile

#41

Post by afavour »

dinko7 wrote: post #9
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've noticed this as well. My best guess is either low hardware or just a bad solution. If they planned to use a unified codebase for Prime app, they likely went with something HTML/CSS-based, which would explain the performance issues. I could be wrong, but it's just a hunch I have.

> they likely went with something HTML/CSS-based, which would explain the performance issues.

This is the case with a lot of apps that still manage to be performant. So it's quite possible Amazon are writing bad HTML/CSS but that's possible in other languages too.

Re: What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile

#42

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

afavour wrote: post #41
dinko7 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this as well. My best guess is either low hardware or just a bad solution. If they planned to use a unified codebase for Prime app, they likely went with something HTML/CSS-based, which would explain the performance issues. I could be wrong, but it's just a hunch I have.

> they likely went with something HTML/CSS-based, which would explain the performance issues. This is the case with a lot of apps that still manage to be performant. So it's quite possible Amazon are writing bad HTML/CSS but that's possible in other languages too.

Indeed, YouTube uses some sort of stripped-down Chromium (Cobalt I think it's called) with the client UI authored in HTML (and friends) for all of their clients and it's not deficient in performance compared to others. The Prime client is notoriously janky, even on Apple TVs, IME.

Re: What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile

#44

Post by embedding-shape »

mrweasel wrote: post #17
dinko7 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember one time there was a random Philips TV that just kept crashing when the user tried to do "right" on the last item in a horizontal menu. The client kept testing on this TV, and we spent 3 weeks because my team lead at the time wouldn't trust me that I needed the TV to solve it. They finally agreed to send us the TV. Solved the issue in 10mins.

Who do I send my TV to to figure out why launching the DR app (Danish public broadcaster) on my Philips TV will power on the PlayStation and then crash? Normally I'd just use the AppleTV, but the kid stole the AppleTV to watch cartoons in the guest bedroom. I continuously surprised that a 10 year old AppleTV still a better option than using the apps that comes with the TV.

> Who do I send my TV to to figure out why launching the DR app (Danish public broadcaster) on my Philips TV will power on the PlayStation and then crash?

Bit me recently when I got a PS5 too, apparently there is a "new" thing called HDMI CEC, which for some stupid reason defaulted to "turn on TV turns on connected device" and vice-versa when first installed. I'm guessing the DR app somehow cares/sends CEC messages (not sure if that's the right terminology, but whatever) to the PS and turns it on.

Maybe forcing CEC off on both the TV and the PS can fix the issue, unless you actually use CEC for it's intended purpose.

Re: What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile

#45

Post by user_7832 »

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.

Can't speak for everyone but personally, I'd much rather read a slightly-imperfect human writing than an LLM that has a very artificial tone. Trust yourself!

You can ask the LLM to "mention a few places where I can improve", rather than having it re writing everything, if you really want to.

Re: What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile

#46

Post by 1970-01-01 »

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'm against slop just as much as the next person, but this wasn't bad. Why does he need to use his own words when the message is right there in cleartext? It's not wrong, sloppy, nor an incorrect hallucinated lesson.

"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"

Re: What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile

#47

Post by hollandheese »

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…

>Amazon are bad at consumer software, with the exception perhaps of the kindle

The Kindle has the worst software of any e-ink device on the market.

Re: What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile

#48

Post by steve1977 »

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…

As someone dealing with AWS daily, I wouldn't say their UI/UX is better on their cloud services. It's certainly the worst of the big three* (with Azure second and Google Cloud best)

* in English speaking markets, don't know about the Chinese providers.

Re: What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile

#49

Post by dlcarrier »

dbbk wrote: post #22
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…

TVs are NOT powerful. It’s like writing software for the Lunar rover.

Even the slower ones are more like a Wii U, which is perfectly capable of everything a set-top box needs to do. Really, the hardware acceleration does all of the heavy lifting, and the processor only needs to render text and coordinate what to composite.

It's the bloat of the software layer on top that's slowing things down.

A 1st-generation Chromecast only has 512 MB pf RAM and a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, and it can handle video streaming just fine. Building an interface on top of that doesn't take a lot of resources, if the underlying layers aren't bloated. With current Android/iOS development, they very much are.

Post reply on HN