Stop typing on your TV with a remote: setting up a source from your phone

Typing on a TV with a remote is the worst part of almost any media app. A server address, a user name and a password, entered one letter…

Typing on a TV with a remote is the worst part of almost any media app. A server address, a user name and a password, entered one letter at a time with a D-pad, is where a lot of people give up, and they give up before the app has played anything. In Yonto Player the answer is a button called Set up from your phone.

The TV shows a QR code, your phone opens a page with the same form, and you type on a real keyboard. This post is about the design: why the two devices talk through a service on the internet and not directly, and why what comes back from the phone only fills in a form. What you see On a TV, the forms for adding or editing a source have Set up from your phone at the top.

You choose it and the TV shows a QR code, with its address written beside it for a camera that will not cooperate. You scan the code, or open the address in your phone's browser, and a page opens with the same form. You fill it in and choose Send to the TV. The TV's form fills in and says "Filled in from your phone. Check it, then save." Nothing is saved until you choose Save with the remote.

That last step is deliberate, and it is the one the rest of the design is built around. One channel, several forms The same mechanism fills in more than a source. It also takes the address of a plugin repository and the address of a plugin. Each of those is just a different list of fields, and a plugin's fields are the ones it declares, so the phone page matches the plugins installed on that TV.

There is one editor and one set of rules, and the phone is another way to type into it. When you edit a source you already have, the page starts empty. You fill in only what you want to change, and whatever you leave empty keeps what is saved. Why not a page on the local network? The obvious design is for the TV to serve a small page on your Wi-Fi and for the phone to open it.