State of Smart and Connected TV 2024: A Comprehensive Guide
The start of the year has seen plenty of announcements, deals, and other moves in the world of Smart and Connected TV. New operating systems are seeing the light of day, old operating systems are making important moves to continue to stay relevant... never a boring day in the world of TV. In this blog we’ll take a look at all things TV — this is the State of Smart and Connected TV, 2024.
Smart TV is the Biggest
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of it all, I thought it best to first take a moment to recognise the fact that the vast majority of all viewing happens on the big screen. Because, well, it does! In the latest industry report from the great folks at NPAW, they paint a picture clear as day. Smart TV usage is still continuing to grow, while it’s already the biggest (literally) among the bunch of other viewing experiences. Growing from 48% to a whopping 55% of playtime, Smart TV is ever strong. It’s a clear signal we can see from some industry giants as well, with many opting to increase their presence on the big screen.
Leading example, Crunchyroll (owned by Sony), known for its vast library of anime and manga series, just a few weeks ago released apps for both Samsung Tizen and LG WebOS. A move that has been requested many times on social media platforms. Notably absent on Smart TV is, still, Formula 1! I’ve written about this before, in fact, I used some of my free time to build a Smart TV app connecting to their APIs that I can use on my own televisions. The blog I wrote talking about my experience with Formula 1 for Smart TV is still one of my most viewed, with thousands finding it through the likes of Google and Reddit. Smart TV is here to stay, and more and more companies are realising its massive potential. Some a bit quicker than others ;).
Setting the Stage: In the News
The beginning of the year is always interesting for the world of TV. We have all the announcements at CES to start with, which usually showcases the line-up of the majority of TVs coming our way in the year ahead. This year was no other, which you can read all about in my blog about CES 2024. So what are some of the interesting and important highlights from this year's CES?
- Panasonic announced their partnership with Amazon to ship Panasonic TVs running FireTV.
- LG is finally turning the tide and providing updates to older TV models.
- Roku is upping the competition with their own Roku Pro TV line-up.
- Xperi’s TiVo is expanding its reach with more manufacturing partnerships.
That’s just four announcements from CES this year, where plenty more can be found in my dedicated blog. But even just these small news items paint a clear picture: fragmentation. All of the manufacturers mentioned in these news articles are developing, maintaining and supporting their own operating systems. And there’s a lot more of those, which we’ll get to in a moment. Adding insult to injury though, rumours have been going around for months about Amazon ditching their Android-based FireTV OS for a different setup. What does that even mean for Panasonic who only just announced their partnership with Amazon FireTV? Let alone, what is this going to mean for app developers?
Another interesting announcement from this year is the launch of Titan OS. Similar to the likes of TiVo and VIDAA (used by e.g. Hisense), Titan OS doesn’t aim to create their own TVs (not yet at least, looking at you, Roku), rather they are making deals with manufacturers to use Titan OS. Among the first to announce support is TP Vision, known for the Philips and AOC brands, giving Titan OS a flying start to its existence in the competitive TV market.
Finally, some interesting news came out last week stating Walmart’s intention to acquire Vizio at a valuation of approximately $2.3 billion. An interesting, but easily explained move. Similar to what Amazon is able to do with Fire TV; Walmart clearly sees massive potential in the CTV space. Not just for the simple subscribers, but rather the ecosystem around it. Think about the massive advertisement opportunities (Vizio is rather well known for its ad platform). But, importantly, Walmart will directly be able to compete with Amazon when it comes to the CTV shopping experience as well. Having control over both the shopping as well as the CTV-ad experience is a massive opportunity that I expect Walmart will fully try to capitulate on.
The Contenders
So, where does all that news leave us? I’ll write everything out for you in a minute, but I thought I’d start with a page from Bitmovin’s latest Video Developer Report.
Need some glasses (the second image should be slightly better if you click on it)? Granted, this list includes devices in additional categories like the web browser and mobile. But man, that is one long list of devices. Now, this list is made up of devices that respondents of Bitmovin’s survey currently actively support. I’m still waiting for the latest report from Conviva that generally contains a bit more information over actual usage, but the picture remains the same as with the news coverage; fragmentation. For the sake of this blog, we’ll walk through the operating systems rather than the specific devices — operating systems paint a clearer picture than branded devices (for example Titan OS vs Philips and AOC).
Smart TV platforms
Samsung Tizen
Arguably still the biggest and well-known Smart TV brand has to be Samsung’s Tizen. As can be seen from Bitmovin’s report as well, a good 51% of respondents claim to support Tizen. Coming from my own knowledge, I can concur that the first platform most companies look to go live on is definitely Samsung Tizen. The reach is among the biggest, if not the best, so it makes total sense. Building Samsung Tizen apps can be done in a few different ways. Most opt for using web technologies, but they also offer .NET support in some way. Going back as far as televisions launched in 2015, Samsung Tizen is the easiest and best entry into the world of Smart TV
LG WebOS
Quickly following behind Samsung is the other South Korean giant, LG. Going back as far as 2014, LG’s WebOS is another big contender in the world of Smart TV. With their signature OLED technology, LG televisions have been among the most sold out there. Similar to Samsung, LG also uses web technologies for the apps on their platform — making it a good platform to develop parallel to Samsung Tizen.
Android TV/Google TV
Around for quite some time now as well, is Android TV. Developed by Google similar to Android for mobile phones, many brands have opted for using Android TV (and the later rebranding to Google TV) on their televisions. Manufacturers like Sony and Philips are among the more well-known from a large list of brands sporting Android TV. Development is done in multiple ways, with both a native (with Kotlin and Java) approach, as well as various web-based techniques (through the use of a native webview wrapper). React Native also comes with support for Android TV, making that one-app-fits-many approach totally viable here.
Amazon Fire TV
Currently still based on Android TV (but for how long?), Fire TV is another interesting contender in the industry. Primarily used on Amazon’s own Fire TV Stick and Cube CTV devices, but with the recent addition of Panasonic — Fire TV is making its way onto Smart TVs as well. With its current base in Android TV, developing an app for Fire TV is using the exact same techniques. This often results in someone developing an app for Android TV and Fire TV at the same time.
Vizio Smartcast
After the recent news of Walmart’s intention to acquire Vizio, I only expect to see bigger growth from these guys. At the time of writing, Vizio isn’t available worldwide (primarily focused on North America), contrary to all the other operating systems we’ve covered already. With Walmart’s acquisition, who knows if that’ll change — Walmart isn’t operating worldwide either after all. Regarding development, Vizio’s Smartcast (launched in 2016) sports web-based applications; making it another candidate to be developed in the same line as Tizen and WebOS.
VIDAA
The first in our list that operates in an OEM-like fashion. VIDAA, or VIDAA U, is an operating system that’s available on some of the leading TV brands out there. Specifically Hisense, also being part owner of VIDAA, is responsible for the majority of devices out in the world with this operating system. Similar to Tizen, WebOS and Smartcast; VIDAA works with web-based technologies for their app platforms.
Titan OS
As mentioned in the news articles section of this blog already, Titan OS is one of the newest contenders on the market. Mainly supported by TP Vision under the brand names of Philips and AOC, Titan OS is expected to grow rather quickly in its market penetration. Luckily, similar to a few others mentioned already, Titan OS is adding another to the ‘web-based platforms list’. Life made easy, sort of (much like Chrome and Safari, the browsers running on these devices aren’t exactly all the same).
RDK
Kind of an odd one to put on the list, as RDK is rather big and in my eyes often a bit ‘vague’. RDK, or reference development kit, is a standards organisation that has a lot of standard components and integrations available to be used by members of RDK. What generally happens though, is that some form or layer is still put on top of RDK. It shouldn’t happen, standards and such, but it here we are. The base is the same though, so turn-around, updates and underwater support are often great — still a big fan. Development-wise, you might have some difficulties depending on what device you’re running on. RDK can be found on many devices out there. On the side of Smart TV, Sky Q and Sky Glass are great examples — with CTV devices like Comcast’s X1 also belonging in the RDK bucket. The best of this? RDK offers great support for web-based apps, with Lightning often being the preferred javascript framework of choice.
Whale TV OS
Yet another for the web-based development bucket. Whale TV OS from the company ZEASN is, like VIDAA and Titan OS, operating in an OEM-like fashion. Having previously primarily been the operating system used on TP Vision’s Philips and AOC brands, it’ll be interesting to see their next moves now that Titan OS has launched.
Coolita OS
A for the Western world rather unknown operating system, Coolita OS is primarily used in Southeast Asian markets like India, Thailand and Vietnam. This OS, built on top of Linux, is a lightweight web-based OS, making the same web technologies from many of the operating systems in our list once again viable here.
TiVo OS
As shared in the recent news, Xperi’s TiVo is trying to make waves into the world of Smart TV with a bunch of manufacturing deals. The first TiVo OS-based devices from the likes of Sharp are expected to hit the market somewhere in 2024, further adding to the fragmented TV-OS world.
Roku OS
In most cases, I would have added Roku as part of my ‘CTV’ list in this blog. While it totally belongs there too, we shouldn’t forget that many televisions ship with Roku out of the box nowadays. And not just Roku’s own TVs, also many others (e.g. Hisense, TCL, Sharp) make use of Roku’s operating system. Development-wise, Roku is a completely odd duck. Their fully custom development framework (SceneGraph) and language (Brightscript) are like no other. Afraid you’ll have to build a completely new application if you want to support Roku (you totally should, their market share is massive!).
Connected TV platforms
Luckily enough, most of the operating systems I’ve listed for Smart TV carry over to a lot of CTV devices. Chromecast sticks run Google TV, for example. A lot of set-top boxes (e.g. Comcast X1) run RDK, and we’ve already discussed Roku and the Amazon Fire TV Stick and Cube as well. So while the same fragmentation exists when looking at Connected TV, it’s very much a two-bird-with-one-stone situation. Carefully targeting some of the already mentioned operating systems can grant you a large market share across both Smart and Connected TV. There is only one outlier…
TV OS
Who other than Apple could possibly have been the outlier (I mean, the image was a big tell wasn’t it)? Apple’s TV OS is only available for the sweet Apple TV devices that you can connect to your TV. Used widely in many countries, it has an important place in Apple’s device ecosystem. Development for this device uses similar technologies to iOS, with the main development languages being Swift and Objective-C. You can also leverage React Native, which could be an interesting option if you also aim to target Android TV. The only missing thing is the option for running web-based applications on Apple TV. Unofficially there is an option to run a webview, but Apple doesn’t allow the usage of this through the Appstore. If they would open support for web apps, for many developers life would become a million times easier! But that’s coming from someone who really digs web development, we must not forget those preferring native.
And then the rest
If you thought the buck stopped after Smart and Connected TV, you are mistaken. You might have seen the list of devices in the image up above, and there is one category that fits very well into this big-screen category: consoles. Used in direct connection with big screens (okay, not always, Nintendo Switch is a thing), consoles are yet another device to consider when you’re developing TV-like experiences. Leaving Nintendo Switch and their rather small market share and often hand-held-only experience alone for a second; Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s Playstation are important to cover — with both seeing around 20% of support in Bitmovin’s survey, you definitely shouldn’t overlook the potential of these devices. Gaming is a massive (and still growing) thing after all, with these consoles often replacing any native applications already present on TVs. Luckily, both Xbox and Playstation offer some form of web development support. You can of course always go the direct gaming route with frameworks like Unity or Unreal Engine, for a more native feel.
HbbTV and ATSC3.0
I promise this is really the last one. Gone, but not forgotten. I think many people don’t really think about HbbTV, let alone ATSC3.0 when looking at which TV platforms to build apps for. And for good reason. I would say their use cases are rather different than typical pre-installed applications. HbbTV is that thing where when you’re watching a regular linear TV channel, a red button on the screen shows. Clicking the red button on your remote then opens the HbbTV application in full, giving all sorts of interactional possibilities. In many cases the app is directly linked to the TV channel you’re watching; it might offer continue watching capabilities, watching different episodes of the series currently being played on the linear channel; the possibilities are endless — it is a TV app after all.
ATSC3.0 is a rather interesting beast as well. Dubbed ‘NextGen TV’, ATSC3.0 is the next iteration in a series of broadcasting and television standards. Often seen as being supported in newer TV launches, I’m still a bit uncertain of the role of this new standard in the TV app ecosystem. You can craft similar experiences for HbbTV and ATSC3.0. While a lot of the other aspects of ATSC3.0 might be very valuable, I’m not entirely sold on it replacing HbbTV — which is a growing standard in itself. Regardless, both of these allow web-based applications, which is a great help for any developer.
Concluding
That’s a lot of platforms! And I’m fully certain I have missed some obscure platforms that live out in the world on a small subset of devices (if you know of any, please let me know!). The gist of it all is that we live in a completely fragmented TV-OS market. New operating systems are even popping up, further contributing to the chaos. What helps are the standards and the use of similar technologies. With many operating systems picking web-based technologies, you can target a lot of operating systems without having to fully rewrite your application. Don’t get me wrong, every OS has its quirks. While you think it might be easy and it’s all ‘just web’, that’s just not the entire story. TV development is rather complex, with a lot of interesting problems and challenges.
The main thing I want to leave you with is that 55% from NPAW’s report we looked at at the very beginning of this blog. 55% of viewing time is done on the big screen. So if I can give you a final message, it would be: don’t sleep on Smart and Connected TV. Because if you do, you’re missing out on the majority of your potential audience.
PS. Interested in discussing all things Smart and Connected TV? Feel free to drop me a message on LinkedIn, or reach me through my email: matthijs.langendijk@wearetriple.com.
