The TV lab cloud farms never built.
Real Samsung, LG, Roku, and Apple TV panels on your wall — and the boxes under them: cable set-top boxes, Xbox, PlayStation. Live video and audio over HDMI capture, element-level automation on the platforms that allow it, and remote-control-level testing on every app — including store apps you don't own.
Every screen in the living room.
Smart TV test automation where the platform exposes an engine, black-box remote-and-video control where it doesn't — every panel and box on one lab network.
Samsung Tizen
Native driver over sdb and the Chrome DevTools Protocol. Remote keys, app launch and install, live video, and full element-level automation on debuggable web apps. Models from 2015 onward.
LG webOS
Native driver over SSAP and CDP, including pointer gestures webOS supports natively. Same two-level control as Tizen, with a published model-year matrix back to 2014.
Roku
WebDriver-style automation over Roku's External Control Protocol: remote keys, channel install and deep-linking, element queries on the app UI tree, media-player state, and screenshots.
Apple TV
Driven through the same pipeline as iOS devices — install builds, run XCUITest, and control tvOS apps on real Apple TV hardware in the rack.
Android TV & Fire TV
Android-based TVs and sticks join the lab like any Android device — ADB control, automation frameworks, and app installs work out of the box.
Any HDMI source, black-box
Cable set-top boxes, Xbox, PlayStation, or any other box with an HDMI output: a capture node streams the real screen and audio and drives it like a physical remote. Same for DRM-protected playback. No debugging access needed.
Chromecast devices are discovered on the lab network automatically and join test sessions for cast-target coverage.
Weighing a cloud vendor for TV? See how RobusTest compares to BrowserStack for smart TV testing.
Black-box for any app. White-box for yours.
Works on every app
Connect to the TV, launch or close any app — store apps, native apps, or your own — send remote keys and pointer gestures, and watch the live screen with audio in your browser. No debugging access required, so competitor apps and retail content are fair game.
- Live screen + audio via HDMI capture, ~100–150 ms on LAN
- Full remote control: D-pad, media keys, text entry
- App launch, close, install, and deep-linking
- DRM-protected playback visible — it's a real capture of a real panel
For your own web apps
Developer-signed, debuggable web apps get element-level control through the Chrome DevTools Protocol: click buttons, type into fields, read page state, run assertions, and capture the in-app DOM — the same white-box precision you expect from browser automation.
- Click, type, evaluate, and read text by element
- Assertions against real page state, not screenshots
- In-app DOM capture for debugging failures
- Drive it from WebDriver-compatible clients or Maestro-style YAML flows
Requires Developer Mode on the TV. Store and native apps can't be inspected — they're driven black-box instead.
Support you can look up, not guess at.
A TV's browser engine is fixed at manufacture — neither Samsung nor LG updates it — so automation capability is set by model year. Remote control and live video work on every supported year; element automation depends on the engine.
Samsung Tizen
| Model years | OS | Support |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 – 2026 | Tizen 5.5 – 10.0 | Full element automation |
| 2017 – 2019 | Tizen 3.0 – 5.0 | Core automation (older engine) |
| 2015 – 2016 | Tizen 2.3 – 2.4 | Remote + live video only |
LG webOS
| Model years | OS | Support |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 – 2026 | webOS 5.x – 26 | Full element automation |
| 2016 – 2019 | webOS 3.x – 4.x | Core automation (older engine) |
| 2014 – 2015 | webOS 1.x – 2.x | Remote + live video only |
Recommended baseline for full automation coverage: 2020-or-newer panels — the configuration we validate against.
One small node per TV wall.
Capture
An HDMI grabber (or camera, for panels without capture access) feeds the TV's real output — video and audio — into the node.
Stream
The node hardware-encodes the feed and streams it straight to the tester's browser at roughly 100–150 ms glass-to-glass — no plugins, no client install.
Control
Key presses and automation commands travel back over the same connection and reach the TV through its native protocol — or a USB HID remote for anything else.
Web vitals, on a television.
OTT performance testing only tells you something when it runs on the real panel. During a live session the node samples your app's actual behavior on the TV — not an emulator — and streams it to the tester once a second.
- In-app frame rate and system CPU load
- App and device memory, with DOM node count as a leak signal
- Largest Contentful Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift — on TV hardware
- Stream QoE panel so testers can separate app slowness from network slowness
Documentation
Put your OTT app on a real TV wall.
Tell us which platforms you ship to — we'll spec the TV nodes, capture hardware, and panel list for your lab.