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Smart TV & OTT testing

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.

Platform coverage

Every screen in the living room.

TIZEN

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.

WEBOS

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

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.

TVOS

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

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

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.

Two levels of control

Black-box for any app. White-box for yours.

Level 1 · Remote + live video

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
Level 2 · Element automation

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.

Model-year support

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 yearsOSSupport
2020 – 2026Tizen 5.5 – 10.0Full element automation
2017 – 2019Tizen 3.0 – 5.0Core automation (older engine)
2015 – 2016Tizen 2.3 – 2.4Remote + live video only

LG webOS

Model yearsOSSupport
2020 – 2026webOS 5.x – 26Full element automation
2016 – 2019webOS 3.x – 4.xCore automation (older engine)
2014 – 2015webOS 1.x – 2.xRemote + live video only

Recommended baseline for full automation coverage: 2020-or-newer panels — the configuration we validate against.

How a TV node works

One small node per TV wall.

01

Capture

An HDMI grabber (or camera, for panels without capture access) feeds the TV's real output — video and audio — into the node.

02

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.

03

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.

Live TV session — Tizen panel Illustration
TV performance panel

Web vitals, on a television.

During a live session the node samples your app's real behavior on the panel — 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
60 FPS
In-app frame rate
LCP
Largest contentful paint
CLS
Layout shift
1 Hz
Vitals sample rate

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.