Episode 26

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Published on:

19th Mar 2025

Smart TV Testing Made Simple with Dave Lucia of TV Labs

Testing smart TV applications presents unique challenges that traditional web testing approaches can't solve. Dave Lucia, CTO and co-founder of TV Labs, shares how his team built a platform that virtualizes televisions and set-top boxes to help media companies test their smart TV apps on physical devices.

Learn about TV Labs' innovative architecture and how they handle everything from camera-based testing systems to their custom Lua-based DSL for faster test execution. A key highlight is how choosing Elixir as their primary technology has enabled TV Labs to build a robust orchestration system. The language's built-in capabilities for fault tolerance, process isolation, and distributed computing make it particularly well-suited for managing concurrent connections and real-time state across multiple devices.

The discussion also explores practical insights about system architecture, including how TV Labs leverages Phoenix presence for real-time device state tracking and achieves microsecond-level performance for message broadcasting.

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About the Podcast

Platform Engineering Podcast
The Platform Engineering Podcast is a show about the real work of building and running internal platforms — hosted by Cory O’Daniel, longtime infrastructure and software engineer, and CEO/cofounder of Massdriver.

Each episode features candid conversations with the engineers, leads, and builders shaping platform engineering today. Topics range from org structure and team ownership to infrastructure design, developer experience, and the tradeoffs behind every “it depends.”

Cory brings two decades of experience building platforms — and now spends his time thinking about how teams scale infrastructure without creating bottlenecks or burning out ops. This podcast isn’t about trends. It’s about how platform engineering actually works inside real companies.

Whether you're deep into Terraform/OpenTofu modules, building golden paths, or just trying to keep your platform from becoming a dumpster fire — you’ll probably find something useful here.