I'm a newbe in SmartTV app development and trying to figure out if the related devices (SmartTVs) through their SDKs of the two major vendors Samsung and LG support the following when it comes to a custom implemented app:
Is it possible to auto start the app on TV start/restart? and if yes
how? Does someone know any reference in their APIs of how it is done?
if there is a newer version of my app how does the updates takes
place? Is it possible to automatically update the app or at least
send some short of notification for software update needed?
Thanks in advance
I add some notes:
auto start is possible in some countries on Samsung as ticker app. This ticker app is available only in some countries (I think in Korea and U.S., but I am not sure). If you want ticker app you can switch samsung to the "hotel mode" in the samsung service menu.
auto update is available when you set the flag in config.xml
<autoUpdate itemtype="boolean">y</autoUpdate>
There is no way to achieve autostart in SDK distributed by vendors.
But there is at least one app, that starts with TV (Some European
IPTV provider, can't remember name). You need to contact with
vendors support and find out for yourself.
Samsung apps distributed
and updated through its store, you upload updated version on seller
portal and its distributed on tv. Users are prompted to update app
when new version is available.
LG hosted apps you can update yourself, packaged apps - same as with Samsung.
Related
I am using Samsung smart TV SDK for developing an app.
Is it possible to call an existing smart TV app from another app. It is possible in Android, is it also possible here? And if yes, how do you do it?
It's possible if you know the widgetID of the application that you want to call. widgetID is number formatted string which you will get when you register your application to certification team.
But if you want to call the application that is not yours and you don't know the widgetID of the application then it's not possible.
http://samsungdforum.com/Guide/ref00006/common_module_widget_object.html#ref00006-common-module-widget-object-runsearchwidget
you may get success in loading other smarttv app by using location.href if that app is hosted on some server, this can be achieved in test environment as i have done it my self, But here are some issues of doing it,
when you will send app for Samsung QA, they will straight way refuse the app, as its strictly against their policy to use server redirection,
more ever the biggest issue is with the key codes, so far as per my experience with smart tv app, i can say that Samsung have the different key codes then the other smart tv
I don't have an Apple computer, I just have an iPhone and some knowledge about language development. I want to create my own app for my own use, just for fun! I don't want to pay Apple for a developer account. I just want to develop my app and put it on my iPhone. I can either develop on Linux or Windows. How can I do that?
If you want to develop on an actual iPhone, you'll need a developer licence. To developer apps natively you will need a Mac running XCode.
There's lots of HTML5 libraries for making apps using javascript though. Maybe try out Phonegap or GameSalad
At the minimum you'll need to have OSX (Mac Operating system) to run Xcode/iphone emulator, you wont be able to do this without OSX.
EDIT:
You may be able to develop it using phone gap: http://phonegap.com/
You'll have to do testing on an adriod emulator, but I believe phonegap builds the app in the cloud. Good luck.
You can develop an app using adobe AIR or adobe Flash. Check out FlashDevelop for a free solution for making flash and air apps for everything from windows to android to iOS.
For a somewhat detailed tutorial on how to actually export an AIR project from FlashDevelop so you can install it on an iOS device, see:
http://www.codeandvisual.com/2011/exporting-for-iphone-using-air-27-and-flashdevelop-part-one-installation/
and FYI, this is not JUST for jailbroken iOS devices! :D
Native iOS applications can only be built in Xcode (which can only run on a Mac), and you need a developer membership to deploy those on an actual device (which costs about $100 a year). So, that’s the caveat: You can’t make native apps.
However, native apps aren’t the only option! There are two other approaches.
One way is to make a web app. These days, web apps can do almost everything that a native app can do (even access the camera). Unless you’re building something specialized (like a video editor, for example, or a game that needs to work with Bluetooth game controllers), you can probably make something as a web app. Years ago, I wasn’t happy with the flashcard apps on the market and wanted something custom but super simple to help me study JLPT vocabulary. At the time, I also didn’t have the money for a developer membership. I made it as a web app, and it worked great!
If you’re making a web app, you’ll need someplace to host it. There are lots of options. For example, the free tier on Firebase is plenty for a personal-use web app. You also might want to consider building the app using client-side scripting (like Javascript) so that you can host it statically, which will allow you to tell iOS to cache it so you can utilize it offline (Google “HTML offline manifest” for details).
The other way, if you have a friend with a developer account, is to build your app using a cross-platform framework like Flutter, where you don’t need a Mac to develop and test it, then ask your friend to make it for you. You’ll need to rebuild periodically (I think once a year) because your provisioning profile will expire.
If you use a framework like Flutter that can build both native AND web apps, that gives you the ability to run natively (if you have access to a Mac) or host it statically on someplace like Firebase Hosting (if you don’t).
I want to develop a SmartTV application for the GoogleTV platform and i've been browsing trough the GoogleTV Guidelines (https://developers.google.com/tv/android/).
However, i don't want GoogleTV to be my only platform. I also want the same app to work on devices like Samsung SmartTV and/or LG SmartTV.
But do the guidelines from Google conflict with Samsung guidelines and does the code of my application need a lot of rework to work on other devices?
I'm editing my answer. I just checked the Samsung website and, I'm happy to say, they threw out all the junk.
They use to have a number of different, non-interchangeable, coding languages. And none of them really worked on the TV's of the other manufacturers either. This is most likely the reason why few applications were ever developed for those platforms.
Now they are supporting basic javascript. So, you have the opportunity to build yourself a TV web page and load it up as an application on Samsung and potentially run it from the Google-TV browser. However, I would verify whether your application requires specific HTML5 features (such as offline support) that may not be implemented in the Android-like browser version running on Google-TV. Having said that, you can always build an app that loads locally on Samsung and runs from a remote server on Google-TV?
... for some historical perspective on how we go to where we're at you can continue reading....
The implication of each manufacturer having their own unique OS creating developer fragmentation was probably predictable to them but they were likely working in a panic. After they became aware of the Apple TV when the first patents were make public in 2008 they understood the longer term impact if Apple provided hundred of thousand of applications worth of content and they had nothing to compete. So they got together and decided on a standard they would implement that would provide a non-fragmented solution allowing any app to run on the TV's of any supporting manufacturer. AKA: they got it right.
In 2009 a good number of them announced support for the Yahoo Connected TV standard. However, by 2010 the development framework, app store, etc that was promised had not materialized. This is likely when they all went in their own direction (although you can still buy Yahoo Connected TV sets from Samsung, Sony, LG, Vizio, and Panasonic today).
With the implementation of the Google-TV Market and the ability of developers to transition existing apps to Google-TV apps with only 20% or so of the effort of creating new (thus lowering the cost and supporting the business case for a TV version) that they have a solution that meets their original requirements.
Now, there's certainly going to be a little 'bitten once twice shy' coupled with revenue sharing discussions and perhaps the impact of Google being a hardware manufacturer (Motorola Mobility) but, at the end of the day, the inevitable is inevitable. They either take Google-TV or create their own, very close, must run existing applications, version of Android.
PS: I didn't look at the other manufacturers site.
For my understanding core components like the Player and Remote Control Management are platform specific.
You would need to use a configuration file and implements these components independently for each platform.
Alternatively you can use some cross platform SDK.
Searching on Google for "smart tv app development" I found out:
Joshfire Smart TV SDK
http://www.joshfire.com/products/
Works on Google TV and Samsung
But not on LG
Mautilus Smart TV SDK
http://www.mautilus.com/knowhow/smart-tv-application-development/
As written in their website it covers
LG Netcast 2012
Samsung 2012 / 2013 models.
I hope it can helps.
orangeejs is a new open source project aims to ease the pain of cross platform smart tv app development. The target platforms are latest model of samsung/lg/android/ios.
There is a framework developed by BBC and called TAL. It aims to help you with cross-platform development. All their Smart TV apps were developed using this library so take a look.
First of all if you consider to develop for many TV platforms see the:
https://developers.google.com/tv/web/lib/jquery/
It's jQuery library for Google TV, so you can develop application in HTML/JavaScript just like in Samsung and LG.
Of course there are the differences in key handling, video player, event handling so you will need to develop the framework which cover all this differences.
There are few open source frameworks out there but not mature enough to use it "out of the box".
for example: http://framework.joshfire.com/
You might want to take a look at cloudee-couch which is open-sourced by Boxee. This example/framework is built on top of Spine.js. Base classes take care of key handling, focus, and oauth authentication.
It's not a big deal to make an application for the smart tv platform that supports across the devices. Now the industry is filled with a lot of smart tv app development companies with their unique functionalities and features to offer the customized app as per the business models. FYI I'd suggest you choose the best smart tv app builder from the list. Hope it will be helpful for the video content creators & business owners to stream across the tv.
VPlayed
Zype
Uscreen
Explore the complete list here Ref: https://dev.to/dwarak17/5-smart-tv-app-development-companies-to-develop-tv-apps-in-2021-1584
While both Samsung and LG have proprietary Smart TV systems, they also both support Google TV. If you create an app for Google TV, you'll only have to write it once and it will run on Samsung's Google TV's, LG's Google TV's, Vizio's Google TV's, and Sony's Google TV's.
Iam an android developer and wanted to know if someone has already started developing android apps for Google TV on its emulator.
I have read the google's documents on Google TV and I have few of my thoughts revolving around my way . I wanna know which all capabilities does the Google Tv SDK gives us while working with Google TV emulator..
Does Live TV uses Activity or Fragments on top of which the content(TV SHOWS) is displayed ?
Can we control the Live TV feature provided by Google by customizing the Views of Live TV like placing a widget which shows the newly released movies on a timely basis?
Is Live TV only a native app provided by Google and doesn't offer any flexibility wherein we can replace the Live TV app by writing our own app which shows the same content(TV SHOWS) offered by Live TV ? (as we can modify default contacts app in our android mobile devices)
Please address my confusions !!
There is no official way to have live tv participate with your apps.
You can change the channel of the TV using an intent from your app. (And find out about channels using the channel listing content provider.)
There is no supported way to do this.
You can not make any changes in with live tv thought apps. You can only change the programs not everything. If you Google want to change then they do it, because they have all rights of content. Now all the process are digitilaized. Why Google can made changes in it? Reason Firstly they will receive all the programs by channels after that they will upload on own server. After that send the signals to satellites and satellite send these signals to the users.
Three questions for iPhone developers using Google Analytics within their apps for tracking use of their apps:
Will using Google Analytics cause us to be in breach of the terms and conditions of the Apple SDK 4 for developers?
If the answer to #1 is YES, then what are we -- as iPhone developers -- allowed to use to track usage of our apps?
Has anyone who is using the iPhone SDK 4 built their apps that included the Google Analytics library and found it not to work? I'm being told by my developer that it doesn't work when you build with a Base SDK set to iPhone Device 4.0 and and an iPhone OS Deployment Target set to iPhone OS 3.0.
Thanks in advance!
Answers to your questions:
Yes, with the current API and data collection it looks like it is not compliant with the terms of the SDK. I am using both Flurry and Google in my apps because they offer different feature sets that I need. While Flurry has been very vocal that they are working with Apple to resolve the terms of the SDK, Google hasn't said a peep. So, I'm nervous about using Google but not Flurry, because I think Flurry will change their data gathering if Apple presses hard enough. In any event, I have made sure that I can rip out either analytics service quickly if Apple rejects my app.
My understanding is that it's fine to collect your own device data, as long as you don't report it to others. You especially don't want to share any data that would hint at new devices. That's what got Flurry in trouble. Just remember that you are under NDA with Apple, so anything not publicly announced is between you and Apple. There are also rules about what you do with Device IDs, so make sure you understand those as well.
I am using Google analytics on iOS 4, with deployment target set to 3.0. While I no longer have a device to test against 3.0, it is deployed on the AppStore and seems to be working. (No crash reports)
Louie, I encourage you to take a look at Localytics, our app analytics service. Our service is real-time, we don't sell data to third parties and we release the source code to our libraries.
We also have an updated library that works better with the multitasking or fast-user switching in iOS 4: http://www.localytics.com/blog/
Check out www.flurry.com - they have an awesome service!
They allow you to add "events" so you know not only how many times the apps been downloaded, opened, removed... but you know what buttons and areas they are navigating to once the app is open.
If your app uses core location, you can even see where the users are on a map. Very cool!
Good luck my friend!