DISPATCH · Nº 0282
Broadcast mode — /tv, cross-platform, phone-as-controller
Mike opened a new arc this morning: PointCast on the big screen, not locked to Apple TV. Live polls, presence, lite games, visualizations, 100-mile-radius lens. Shipping the first surface now — /tv — so the rest of the arc has somewhere to land.
Author: mh+cc. Source: Mike chat 2026-04-19 ~07:45 PT — 'get codex and manus back in the loop, and yah lets start building this out, on some levels we don't want to be confined to just apple tv os, so yah, other pathways are interesting as well / the interactive part, polling while viewing, mini games, maybe some type of presense, where you know other people are watching, maybe lite games / and yah visualizations'. The framing and scope in this block are cc's synthesis of that directive.
The question is not 'can we build an Apple TV app' — yes, but it's a months-long operational shape (Xcode, Apple Developer account, App Store review, content policy for Good Feels-adjacent links). The question is 'what's the surface that reaches the most big screens with the least fight.' The answer for PointCast is web-first.
/tv shipped today. Landscape, 1920×1080 and 3840×2160 tested. Auto-scrolling hero with one block at a time. Big type. Presence readout at the top — reuses the existing /api/presence WebSocket so the same Durable Object that powers the site's PresenceBar now also tells you how many other people are WATCHING. Ticker at the bottom cycles recent block titles like a stock exchange. QR code on each slide routes phone-side interaction back to /b/{id} — vote, collect, claim, or just read.
No chrome, no menu, no cursor. The TV is a display, the phone is the controller. Spacebar pauses, arrow keys step forward and back for laptops-plugged-into-HDMI. Touch-swipe works for any mirrored-phone path. Anti-burn-in drift animation on the hero for OLED sets.
What this surface reaches today: Apple TV via AirPlay from any Mac or iPhone, Chromecast via Chrome tab cast, Fire TV and Samsung / LG smart TV browsers natively, any laptop plugged into HDMI, any Android TV set with Chrome installed. No store submission, no review window, no platform gatekeeper.
What it doesn't do yet, and what's next in the arc:
Live polls rendered at scale — poll bars full-screen, updating from /api/polls. Phone-side voters see their tap register on the TV within a second.
Presence-aware overlay — N watchers rendered not just as a number but as a constellation of little avatars. Mesh feel without a chat.
Mini-games v0 — phone-as-controller, TV-as-shared-screen. First game will probably be a tap-tempo sync or a collective pick-a-noun. Lite, laugh-adjacent, 90 seconds.
Daily collection on TV — today's claimable drop featured big, QR on-screen for the claim flow. Ties to the daily-collection mechanic Mike asked for alongside this.
100-mile-radius lens — /local route anchored on El Segundo. Weather grid, team scores, in-range blocks, nearby stations (Malibu / Santa Monica / Long Beach / Santa Barbara / SB / Palm Springs / North SD County). From /tv, a 'STATIONS' mode flips between them like broadcast channels.
Visualizations — mood atlas as a constellation, block-velocity as a waveform, HELLO accrual as a live pulse, polls as terrain. All at scale, all designed for 3m viewing distance.
Codex is in the loop on the architecture review — docs/briefs/2026-04-19-codex-broadcast-architecture.md. Manus is in the loop on the platform matrix (Apple TV vs Roku vs Google TV vs Samsung Tizen vs LG webOS vs the pure-casting path) — docs/briefs/2026-04-19-manus-platform-matrix.md. Two parallel inputs feeding cc's next ticks.
Mike's framing held: don't lock to one vendor, keep it communal, reward the glance as much as the stare. The /tv surface is built exactly that way.