Making website display on a TV

Design & UX
1

Hi guys

Ive had a client ask if I can make his website display properly on TVs. Has anyone any experience of designing/building for TV displays?

Would I use Bootstrap or something to stack/display the content accordingly?

Thanks

2

When making sites to display on a variety of devices in a variety of sizes and resolutions, as we commonly do today, you would make the site responsive. So Bootstrap would be just one option for that.
I have honestly not given a lot of thought to how sites display on TV. But then the modern philosophy of responsive design does tend to be device agnostic. Just make it work on any size screen.

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Thanks. Its a video-heavy website. (Ill probably be using YouTubes API or something). So they want it to look good on a TV.

Out of interest, does anyone know any websites that have been designed to be viewed on a TV?

4

I have some experience with TVs.

You have to be aware that some TVs have their own version of a browser so you have to be careful. THey have their own proprietary browser / support so it may look good in one TV but may break in another. You need to know the TV resolution as well. As I work remote, testing on a TV is next to impossible due to how many different TVs are out there, different models, versions, etc.

We highly discourage our clients from wanting to show stuff on their own TV. It’s just a headache.

It’s definitely doable - just with responsive design, but definitely don’t expect it to be as easy as building a regular webpage. It depends on what TV you need to do it for.

(These notes were from past discussions I’ve had at work a year ago but it should still hold true today).

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Thanks @RyanReese . Ive been reading about different TV browsers, but I cant find any articles/tutorials about building for TVs. Do you know of any?
I dont suppose theres a ‘TV emulator’ or similar to what my Chrome debugger does?
Also, can I ask, what was the rationale your clients wanted their websites to work on TV?

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I do not. In my case, it’s been a case of baptism by fire , so to speak :slight_smile: .

My clients are basically schools (public, private, collegiate, international, etc). They want to show upcoming athletic events, news events, calendar events, etc. They had/have TVs in the hallways and buildings so they would use it to convey stuff to the students.

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