Digitization has surpassed all the unseen and foul boundaries to embark on the new journey of advancement. One good example of how digital technology has changed the living style is having smart TVs installed in every home. Therefore, android tv development has taken the internet by storm.
So, are you curious to know what an Android TV app development is?
In this article, we will shed some light on android tv app development. Alongside this, the difference between Android tv development and android app development would be elucidated below in lines.
So, hold your horses and lend your eyes for sometime in order to soar in the information.
What is an Android tv app development?
Once there was a time when Google wished to bring android to every medium from phones to watches to cars to smart TVs. Undoubtedly, the response was tremendous as people welcomed this technology with open arms.
Instead of Google tv, Android smart tv by Google got the hype which was never imagined before. Henceforth, the smart tv apps add more fun to the whole experience.
Android tv apps are in fact software you can download and install on your Android smart TVs. Interestingly, these smart tv apps allow the users to stream view-on-demand content expediently.
Moreover, you can stream android tv in order to watch your favorite show online on the much bigger screen.
Intrigued to hire an Android developer? Contact Us!
A Support For Google Cast
Android TV has announced its support for Google Cast and if you must know this technology is holded up by many apps and services and allows android smart TV devices to receive streamed visual content from different devices.
Not just this, Android TV brings new opportunities for home automation, gaming, and communication. Yes, without any doubt, Android TV apps have become a hub for all connected devices. Now, streaming your favorite shows on quite enlarged screens is no more tricky.
Difference Between Android tv development and Android app development?
How to Make an App: The flexibility or complexity that is certainly incurred while transforming Android mobile apps into Android smart tv apps can be daunting. But, with Android developer hiring, you can make it totally a breeze.
Before we have given an answer to what is an android tv app development. In this section, we will head towards the difference between Android tv development and Android app development.
The difference is divided into three parts:
- The problems that are encountered
- The features to be loved
- The ugly corner
The problems that are encountered
New things you will encounter in the Android tv app development:
- Notably, in the “TV” environment, the user interaction is achieved by dominating remote-control key-initiated events which is of course contrasting the situation of simplified touches, swipes, and clicks of mobile app development world. This has further introduced extra risk and complexity in integration and device reaction time.
- While developing remote-controlled smart tv apps, android developers have to focus on UI elements involvement. However, handling UI elements can be challenging and is considered like a culture change from the mobile environment. Thereby, we have android developers for hire who can develop the logic in order to highlight focused elements and devise a logic which leads a user to move between blocks of elements and elements with the 5-key RCU.
- What’s more? Astonishingly, Android smart TV provides the “Leanback Framework” to develop apps which allows them to run on remote-controlled devices.
Disclaimer: The intellectual or physical differences while comparing the user experience of the Android app development and Android tv app development must not be overlooked. (Wink!)
The features to be loved
Hire an android app developer to get these happening features included in your Android smart tv app:
- As said before, the apps in the TV environment are remote-controlled which means the user interaction would be much more flexible and simplified. However, Google has thrown some crucial guidelines regarding TV applications. Hence, compliance is quite needed in order to get Google certification. No doubt, this is why simplified UI design is required.
- Luckily, there are no screen orientation issues found. No orientation changes means a big relief.
- One layout can be for multiple screen resolutions and orientations. The requirements to create dozens of layouts has been discarded.
- As Set Top Boxes (STBs) are plugged in the main power socket and network connection (for this) is Wi-Fi or wired, the data plan is not affected. So, no hassle in downloading or streaming the content on Wi-Fi or mobile data.
- Irrefutably, the smart tv apps android developers create are likely to exclusively appear on the STB. This denotes the notion that the application is not competing with other apps (created for hardware resources). Instead, the android tv apps compete with STB-based functions like OS processes, middleware, or other items that consume bandwidth, memory, etc.
The ugly corner
Be mindful of the fact that the Android TV environment comes with some limitations too. Some of these drawbacks are also worth-mentioning:
- If you must know, some STB-based devices run AOSP which means no proprietary devices are installed and a lot of functions have to be deployed into the software from scratch.
- STBs you find in the Android smart tv deployment run on old versions like Lollipop or KitKat irrespective of the presence of latest versions.
Point to Ponder: While considering a look at TV or OTT deployment, you might have observed that thousands of devices installed in homes run different outdated technologies which means the APIs are not accessible for Android developers and the zipped files.
- Some STB devices have inexpensive hardware components as compared to the lower-end mobile sets. Prominently, STB-based devices do a lot more than mobile gadgets. For instance, STB aids in scanning TV channels, stream Android tv, or transcoding analogue stream formats into digital ones. Hence, these functions slow down the app or device performance as there are less hardware resources available.
- STB-based smart tv applications are customized by Android developers for the particular STB devices and remote controls, which means no code reusability or flexibility can be availed of.
Final Words:
So… what is an android tv app development? It derives an app build for televisions installed in your homes. This smart tv apps development is indeed way different from mobile app development (as elucidated above). Hopefully, you have found the differences informative and considerable, too.
