Building for Smart TV, Roku, and Mobile: Architecting Cross-Platform Streaming Apps That Scale

There is no denying that we live in a fragmented device ecosystem, where streaming applications must offer nothing less than seamless, consistent, and intuitive experiences across mobile phones, web browsers, smart TVs, streaming platforms (Roku) & game consoles. It is no mean engineering feit to achieve what requires a careful balance of shared code, platform-specific design, and robust operational workflows. Having worked with Univision, Endeavor Streaming and Vevo over the years, we’ve learned firsthand how to tackle these challenges. So what does it take? Certainly a unified yet flexible architecture, and plenty more besides. We have amalgamated just a few thoughts from our experiences.

Why Cross-Platform Alignment Matters

When building for multiple platforms, the temptation is to treat each one as a silo. But looking for crossover, both in design and code, can dramatically improve development speed, reduce duplication, and enforce consistent experiences.

Performance & code reuse, particularly in UI rendering and business logic, helps teams ship features faster and maintain consistent behavior across devices. For example, using React and React Native allows you to target web, iOS, Android, and even some Smart TV platforms with one codebase, meaning less duplicated code and a more consistent style across all platforms. Mobile, web and tv used to have 3 separate implementations of a basic video card, but using a shared react-native component library that transpiles into react-native-web there is just one implementation - enabling a dramatic decrease in developer effort of up to 33% in our experience - as only one team needs to create the shared component and other teams implement it However, this comes with a caveat: performance, capabilities, and constraints vary widely across devices. TVs and some mobile devices typically have low powered CPUs meaning a web app on a powerful laptop can handle heavier computation than the browser in a web based Smart TV. Therefore it’s important to write with a focus on performance so some users don’t have a poor experience on their device.

Key takeaway: Write with performance in mind & share as much code as possible. But only after deeply understanding the limitations and expectations of each platform.

Respecting Platform-Specific UX Patterns

Cross-platform does not mean identical. Your user interface must feel right on each device. Which is not easy to achieve.

Imagine designing a content discovery screen. On a TV, users expect to scroll using a remote, often in horizontal carousels, with focus rings highlighting each item. On a mobile device, users swipe vertically and tap with their thumb. On a desktop, it’s mouse clicks and hover states. One “simple” feature in browsing content, has to accommodate no less than three different interaction models.

Player controls are another classic challenge. On a landscape-oriented smart TV or tablet, you have space for detailed scrubbers, quality selectors, and subtitle options. On a phone however, these elements must collapse, stack vertically, or be tucked behind menus. Overlays and popups need to scale gracefully from a 4K TV to a 6-inch phone screen.

Design guidance:

• Identify interaction modality: remote, mouse, or touch.
• Use consistent visual branding but allow layout and behavior to diverge.
• Make controls intuitive per device, not just consistent across devices.

Building for Smart TVs: The Hardest Nut to Crack

Among all platforms, TVs are probably the most challenging. There’s just no single standard. Instead, you’re targeting:

• Native platforms (Android TV, tvOS)
• Web-based platforms (Samsung Tizen, LG WebOS, Comcast, Xbox, PlayStation)
• Streaming boxes and consoles (Roku)

Each comes with its own APIs, rendering & focus management quirks, certification processes, and app store policies. For instance, Roku prohibits external links or QR codes during sign up. Some platforms have strict video codec requirements or accessibility mandates. In-app purchases also behave differently, or may not even be supported at all. For example with deeplinking each tv platform has its own implementation, so it's vital to make a generic interface that can be implemented for all platforms. This makes it easier to add new ones, and call the same functions regardless of platform.

Web based TVs can also give different behaviour from year to year. For example a Samsung TV uses Chrome as the internal browser which gets updated with every new year. This means features can behave differently based on the version of Chrome included on the TV and need to be considered and thoroughly tested before release. At one of our clients, we support 2017 to current Samsung and LG models, meaning that the earliest chrome version is 47 - which was released in 2015! Plenty of polyfills required to ensure the least amount of custom implementations required!

Our recommendations:

Understand each platform’s release, billing and certification requirements upfront. Integrate accessibility, deep linking, and billing logic from the beginning. These should not be seen as an afterthought.

Tailor feature availability per platform. If Roku doesn’t allow a certain feature, hide or replace it contextually and guide users toward an alternative. Vizio for example requires the ability to sign up on device, without external help - a worse user experience but a requirement for app store certification. Ultimately, ensure to test multiple years of web based TVs to guard against feature behavior drift.

Think multi-device workflows. Logging in via remote is painful. We have all been close to launching it across the living room! A smooth companion experience, for example, scan a QR code or enter a short PIN from your phone, drastically improves onboarding. As an example, the UK’s More4 platform does this well.

Shared Backend, Divergent Frontends

Regardless of frontend, all platforms must be connected to the same backend services for data and analytics consistency. But your backend should be smart enough to distinguish devices and adapt responses accordingly.

Operationally, your teams need tight collaboration:

• Shared design principles and architectural patterns.
• A common feature implementation process across all platforms.
• A clear review cycle to ensure UI/UX coherence.

If a new feature is added to mobile but isn’t feasible on TV, make sure backend APIs handle fallbacks gracefully so the user is never left confused.

Choosing the Right Technology Stack

React Native remains a top choice for most mobile and some TV/web platforms. Why? It provides:

• A consistent development model
• Strong community support
• Integration with native modules when needed

There are however alternatives. Lightning JS is gaining traction in the TV space, particularly for its performance benefits on constrained hardware. If you’re targeting low-powered web-based TVs (like Tizen or Amazon’s new OS - rumored to be called Vega), Lightning may be a better fit.

Choosing React Native also allows for code sharing with a web codebase using React if they are built in a flexible way. React & React Native share a lot of principles but also have unique APIs and capabilities which need to be considered when sharing code.

Our Advice for Product Teams and Engineering Leads

Design with interaction diversity in mind. From the first wireframe, account for thumb, remote, and mouse.

Be platform-aware from day one. Don’t delay learning platform constraints until release.

Invest in automation for build and release. Without streamlined deployment, bug fixes and updates become a nightmare.

Test early and often, across your best and worst devices. Smart TVs especially require rigorous performance testing throughout development.

Plan for trade-offs. The perfect product may not be achievable on every platform. Focus on delivering the best possible experience within each platform’s constraints.

Needless to say, cross-platform streaming app development is a complex balancing act. Success lies in designing with empathy for each device, reusing code intelligently, and embracing platform diversity. When done well, your app will feel native everywhere even though it’s powered by one unified architecture. And that is the key to success - the feeling of it being natural - albeit in a digital way - no matter where the user is interacting.

Discover some of the work we have done for Univision and Endeavor Streaming.

If you'd like help evaluating your cross-platform architecture, need guidance tailoring your stack for streaming, or anything related to OTT development, get in touch below.