Since 2008

One codebase.
Every screen in the living room.

Television applications that run on HbbTV, Samsung Tizen, LG webOS, Titan OS and Whale OS — built and maintained as a single code base, by a team that also builds the tools it tests them with.

Talk about a project Open the emulator

The argument

Targets

HbbTV browser runtime
URL + Content-Type
no store
Samsung Tizen Chromium runtime
.wgt
Seller Office
LG webOS Chromium runtime
.ipk
Content Store
Titan OS Chromium runtime
hosted URL
Titan OS store
Whale OS HTML5 browser runtime
hosted URL
Whale OS App Store

Adapters

HbbTV adapter: input · media · lifecycle · storage · packaging
Samsung Tizen adapter: input · media · lifecycle · storage · packaging
LG webOS adapter: input · media · lifecycle · storage · packaging
Titan OS adapter: input · media · lifecycle · storage · packaging
Whale OS adapter: input · media · lifecycle · storage · packaging

The only platform-specific code — about 10%

Shared

One React application — about 90% of the codebase

Screens & routing
Component library & design tokens
Domain model & state
API clients — REST + GraphQL

One application, one thin adapter per runtime. About 90% of the code is shared across all 5 targets.

The problem

Five platforms normally means five builds.

Two signed packages, four review queues, five backlogs — and five codebases that have drifted apart by month six, so the feature your editorial team asked for ships on two of them.

We build one, and adapt it five times.

One application, one thin adapter per runtime. That turns into something you feel every sprint rather than every quarter: one release train, one QA pass, one feature request.

Proof

Bibel TV runs on all five platforms from one code base.

Read the case study

Two ways in

For broadcasters

You commission television applications

What we build, how we work, and what it costs to stop paying for the same feature four times.

What we build →

For developers

You build them

A free HbbTV emulator and test suite that runs in Chrome. No account, no telemetry, no television on your desk.

Open the emulator →

Clients

Private broadcasters in Germany and Austria, a full relaunch across every runtime an audience owns, and the operator app on the HD+ platform.

What we build

Eighteen years of television applications, and they fall into six kinds.

Media libraries

Catalogue, search, continue-watching and a player that behaves on a ten-year-old set.

EPG

Programme data, now and next, themed channels, fed from the broadcaster's own systems.

Livestreaming

Multiple simultaneous streams, with the channel change a viewer expects from a television.

Operator apps

Privileged HbbTV applications that run on the platform itself, not on a channel. We co-built the one on HD+.

SwitchIn advertising

Addressable TV advertising on HbbTV: it invites a viewer out of the spot and into the app, without losing the spot.

Format landing pages

Campaign screens for a running show: The Voice of Germany, Germany's Next Topmodel.

Depth

HbbTV is the hardest of the four, and it is the one that constrains the others.

Terminal browsers, no store, no uniform DRM, and a specification that says exactly what a television must and must not do. Satisfy the HbbTV profile of OIPF DAE and the rest of the living room becomes a packaging problem.

We build the tooling for it too. Our emulator follows ETSI TS 102 796 V1.7.1 and stops where the standard stops — because an emulator that offers more than the target device teaches you the wrong thing.

HbbTV app development →

HbbTV Emulator & Testsuite

Chrome extension · version 2.0.0