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PlutoTV
Continuous Android development for
Pluto TV
Pluto TV
Since 2020, Smartificial engineers have been embedded into Pluto TV’s Android development process, contributing to both Android TV and Android Mobile products as part of the long-term engineering team.
The Client
Pluto TV is a free ad-supported streaming platform owned by Paramount+, combining live television channels with on-demand content across smart TVs, mobile devices and the web. The platform operates at a large scale, with millions of users interacting with the product across highly fragmented Android environments.
Since 2020, Smartificial engineers have been embedded into Pluto TV’s Android development process, contributing to both Android TV and Android Mobile products as part of the long-term engineering team.
Since 2020, Smartificial engineers have been embedded into Pluto TV’s Android development process, contributing to both Android TV and Android Mobile products as part of the long-term engineering team.
The Challenge: Streaming at Scale Across Fragmented Devices
Streaming applications for Android TV devices are a specific engineering problem. Hardware capabilities vary significantly — from high-end televisions to low-cost Android boxes — while user expectations remain the same: instant navigation, stable playback and responsive UI under constant load.
At the same time, the product itself is operationally complex:
At the same time, the product itself is operationally complex:
- live television schedules update continuously,
- recommendation systems need to react in real time,
- advertising logic must remain reliable,
- playback systems need to synchronise across different device types and operating systems.
Solutions
What We Built
(01)
Live Television Guide
We developed a fully custom live TV guide with dynamic loading and real-time navigation between channels and programming blocks.
The guide continuously ingests schedule data as users scroll, while maintaining stable rendering and low memory consumption on constrained Android TV hardware.
The guide continuously ingests schedule data as users scroll, while maintaining stable rendering and low memory consumption on constrained Android TV hardware.
(02)
Personalisation & Content Discovery
The team worked on home screen recommendation systems and personalised content logic based on viewing history and behavioural signals.
The goal was to surface relevant content quickly without slowing down navigation performance or increasing UI complexity.
The goal was to surface relevant content quickly without slowing down navigation performance or increasing UI complexity.
(03)
Native TV Ecosystem Integration
We integrated Pluto TV directly with Android TV operating system features, allowing users to resume playback and access content directly from the television’s home interface without reopening the application.
This required close coordination between the playback state, system APIs and platform-specific behaviour.
This required close coordination between the playback state, system APIs and platform-specific behaviour.
(04)
Advertising & Playback Systems
We implemented non-skippable ad logic directly into the playback flow, along with preview thumbnails and timeline interactions during scrubbing.
These systems had to operate reliably under real streaming conditions while remaining synchronised with analytics and ad delivery infrastructure.
These systems had to operate reliably under real streaming conditions while remaining synchronised with analytics and ad delivery infrastructure.
(05)
Voice Control
The application was integrated with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, enabling playback control and channel navigation through voice commands.
(06)
Ongoing Product Evolution
The work was not limited to isolated feature delivery. Over the years, Smartificial engineers participated in continuous product evolution, including architectural improvements, UI restructuring and the current large-scale rebrand of the Android applications.
The codebase has evolved continuously while remaining stable under frequent release cycles and real production traffic.
The codebase has evolved continuously while remaining stable under frequent release cycles and real production traffic.
How the Team Worked
At different stages of the collaboration, around 30 Smartificial engineers contributed to the Pluto TV ecosystem. The current team includes Android TV developers, Android Mobile developers and QA engineers working directly inside Pluto TV’s development process.
Our engineers participated in sprint planning, architecture discussions, code reviews and release delivery alongside the internal product teams. This was not an external handoff model — it was long-term embedded engineering work inside a live platform.
Our engineers participated in sprint planning, architecture discussions, code reviews and release delivery alongside the internal product teams. This was not an external handoff model — it was long-term embedded engineering work inside a live platform.
Outcome
The Pluto TV Android applications continue to operate as large-scale production systems serving millions of users across a fragmented device ecosystem.
Over seven years of continuous development, the platform evolved through multiple architectural and product iterations while maintaining stable playback, responsive navigation and predictable release cycles under real operational load.
The collaboration remains ongoing.
Over seven years of continuous development, the platform evolved through multiple architectural and product iterations while maintaining stable playback, responsive navigation and predictable release cycles under real operational load.
The collaboration remains ongoing.
Tech Stack
Android & UI: Kotlin, Android Views, Jetpack Compose, Leanback, Material Design, RecyclerView, Navigation | Architecture & Async: Modular architecture, MVP / MVVM, Dagger 2, RxJava 2, Kotlin Coroutines | Networking & APIs: Retrofit, OkHttp, Apollo GraphQL, OpenAPI-generated clients | Media & Playback: AndroidX Media3 / ExoPlayer, Cast, MediaRouter, Avia Player SDK | Storage & Background: Room, DataStore, WorkManager | Analytics & Monitoring: Firebase, Datadog, Adobe AEP, Braze, Snowplow, Comscore, Kochava | Quality & Performance: JUnit, Mockito, Espresso, Robolectric, LeakCanary, Macrobenchmark, SonarQube
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