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.
I would like to know after I built an application for Google TV, how can I get the app listed under http://www.google.com/tv/apps.html, or does Google do anything to help promoting Google TV Only Apps? Since it takes a separate effort to design TV friendly UI and Navigation system, what can we do to make it more visible to Google TV users? Right now the Play Store is very messy and unorganized in a way or it might only because the country I am located.
You should contact the Google TV developer advocates. In particular, Les Vogel, or Krispy. In the past they have looked at apps and provided feedback. They have also helped to get interesting apps into the featured section of the Play Store on Google TV.
You might also consider joining the Sony Developer Network, which allows you to upload your app and have them test it on their Google TV devices. They provide a test report which will help to make your app better for the TV experience. If they like your app, they can also add it to their own featured app section of the Play Store on their Google TV devices.
There is a Google TV community on G+ where you can post about your app to get some feedback from users. Do a Google search and you will also find other forums that deal with Google TV and will help to get the word out about your app.
The best marketing tool is to have a web site for you app and provide a blog to tell users about updates and plans you have for the app. You should also create a YouTube video to show your app in action. Create pages on the various social networks so that users can follow your progress.
Nothing, featured apps are either apps for GTV that are very successful or apps that Google has picked. Currently there is no way of doing anything against that. But I guess Google will work on that if they will continue GTV.
We have developed a new OTT Streaming STB build on an Android platform. How do I get it to operate the Google TV system so that the Apps built for GTV will load and run correctly?
Please note: I am NOT looking for advice on how to get an app onto the GTV platform - what I need is to get the Google TV platform on my STB.
Thanx
Nick
Google TV is not open source. It is built in a different way to core Android, you can't just add it to your build. Nearly anything built for Google TV will work on other Android devices such as yours. The Google Play device filtering is your real problem.
I am doing some compareson between Smart TV platforms way to develop applications and I wonder if Google TV applications only are available in "Full screen" mode? In other words taking up the whole screen.
Samsung Smart TV have three different application layouts available, see link: http://www.samsungdforum.com/upload_files/files/guide/data/html/html_2/getting_started/intro_to_samsung_smarttv_apps.html
Full screen, Single-wide application and ticker. This specifyes how much space the application takes up on the screen so the user can for example watch tv while using the application, because the application only takes up a part of the screen.
I found this FAQ:
Can I use picture-in-picture (PIP) in my Google TV Android application?
No. The picture-in-picture (PIP) feature is only available for live TV. You can't use it in your Android application, nor can you run an Android application in the PIP window.
From that answer I want to say that Google TV applications can only be used in full screen mode. Am I right?
Thanks for helping
Yes they can only be run in fullscreen mode. That is to say only one app can have focus at a particular time. You can however make your app transparent for the most part to allow whatever is underneath it to show through. This post has a good solution Full screen transparent activity (no title & status bar) doesn't work.... why?
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.