Welcome to the new Golden Age of television. Not only is there more great television being produced than ever before, but we also have more choice in how we watch our favorite shows. And while we can access these shows anywhere and anytime through our computers, phones, and tablets, televisions themselves still maintain a special place in the home of many.

But we’re no longer limited to a remote and cable box to control our TVs; we’re using Smart TVs, or streaming from set-top boxes like Roku and Apple TV, or using video game consoles like Xbox and Playstation. And each of these devices allows a user interface that’s much more powerful than your old-fashioned on-screen guide.

When compared to computers and even mobile phones, designing UIs for TV is still a relatively new area. It’s also a fundamentally different platform. Design for TV requires a unique set of considerations, including screen size and distance, technical constraints, and context of use.

This will be the first part of a series that digs into how to start thinking about interfaces for TV. We’ll also be focusing specifically on the gamepad as an input device, and the basics of using the Gamepad API. In Part 2, we’ll show how you can prototype your TV UIs & controllers together.

The Display

How televisions are different from computers, phones and tablets

The first TVs on the market were made of cathode ray tubes (CRT), a clunky technology that produced inconsistent images across TV sets. This issue was particularly bad along the edges of the screen, so to compensate, CRT TVs were subject to overscan. With overscan, the image itself is enlarged slightly so the edges are outside the bounds of the viewing area.