Craig A Holliday

POC TV and Xbox Applications for a Popular Media Player

Only general information is provided for this project because this project is under an NDA

TL:DR

Challenge: A customer approached our team for proof of concepts, integrating their media player across multiple platforms, including WebOS, Tizen, and Xbox. The central challenge was to ascertain and validate the entire gamut of the media player’s capabilities, from diverse media support (Dash, HLS) to DRM, on these platforms, with a particular emphasis on Xbox for me.

Solution: As a Senior Developer:

  • Took the helm of developing the React application specifically tailored for Xbox devices.
  • Ensured the seamless integration of the customer’s media player within the application.
  • Incorporated functionalities allowing dynamic media loading for comprehensive media player testing.
  • Collaborated closely with the team to align the web applications for consistency across all platforms, including WebOS and Tizen.

Tech Stack:

  • React for application development.
  • Media player integration without additional UI frameworks or stylings.

Project Goals

For this project, my team worked with a customer who required POCs of their media player integrated into various platforms.

The requirements were to create React applications that integrated the customer’s media player for WebOS, Tizen, and Xbox.

All of the features of the media player had to be verified—features like: Dash media support, HLS media support, media with DRM, etc.

It was also a stretch goal to test all of the custom UI for the media player and add UI displaying different metrics provided by the media player.

My main focus for this player was building and verifying the web application for Xbox devices.

Functions

  • Senior Developer on a team of 5
    • I was tasked to build and verify the web application for Xbox devices.

Features

  • React application with the integrated media player
  • No other frameworks for UI or styling
  • The ability to select different loadable media to test the media player.
  • WebOS, Tizen, and Xbox web application support.

Project Outcomes

The team proved that an application with an integrated media player could work on all platforms.

The team provided recommendations for the customer to improve the media player’s integration and performance.

Personal Takeaways

This project was great because we could see how each platform handles web applications and library integrations.

We also measured performance on lower-end devices, as most TVs fall into that category.

Handling lower-end devices is an interesting problem to investigate. We had to learn more about React rending because we had to minimize anything affecting performance during media playback.