LG Smart TV App contest 2013-2014 + Bonus: an interview with the winner of last year's contest
Good day! Have you already read about our (now annual) contest of applications for the LG Smart TV App contest 2013-2014? :) If yes, then probably remember that, in addition to the announcement of the competition, there was also an interview with one of the contest finalists in the post.
Today we are visiting Nikolay Kochetkov, one of the developers
vTelek applications, winning the last year's competition. I asked Nikolay to answer a few questions, to tell about the application, about the mechanism of interaction with the competition and about impressions of participation in general. And his answers can be found under the cut. ;)
- Nikolai, good afternoon! Please tell us a little about yourself. Where did you study, where did you work, how did you come up with development for smart TV?
- About myself? Well, as you said, my name is Nikolai Kochetkov, I am 35 years old. Born and raised in Moscow, I graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University, Department of General Nuclear Physics.
The diploma theme was the automation of the control system of a linear electron accelerator, so I can say that I have been programming all my life.
')
He worked a lot where, but the most memorable work in RIA Novosti, where I was engaged in the front-end part of video content integration into a group of agency sites, and in general was responsible for multimedia projects. It was there that I had a chance to get acquainted with the platforms of Smart TV. Now I work in one of the companies engaged in OTT-TV directly on the Smart TV profile, in fact, my victory in the competition became the “golden key” to the door from the office. ;)
- Thank. And what about your application? :) What tasks solves, how did you come up with such an idea?
- Our application is very simple. In fact, it serves one purpose - to give the user the opportunity to watch any web video content on the big screen of Smart TV in one click. Unfortunately, due to the fragmentation of the web video platform as a whole, we cannot yet fulfill all our promises one hundred percent, and at the moment we do not support as many sources as we would like, but we are actively working on expanding the functionality.
- And what is now supported, and most importantly - how does it work?
- From 100% of the workers at the moment I can name the video VKontakte, Youtube videos, tags “video”, posted on the pages, and videos from meta tags opengraph (developed by Facebook). The scheme of the application is elementary. The user links his TV with an anonymous account on the site and receives a special bookmarklet. If a user clicks on a bookmarklet, then his code "looks through" the open page and collects all the videos placed on it. Next, the user is prompted to send the found video to the big screen:
As an intermediary between the TV and your browser is the server of our application. Through it, the link gets into the TV Widget and plays on the big screen.
- And what, really, who needs such functionality? It is available from the very Smart TV, through the browser and built-in clients. Let not in one click.
- For the current day, we have about 28 thousand clients registered in our database, of which about 80% use the application (according to Google Analytics statistics, embedded in the application). Since the project is now supported “on an optional basis,” in its spare time, unfortunately, there is not always enough time for them to fully engage and develop, however, recently we have carried out “side refactoring” server-side and fixed some “elusive” shoals emerging with a large load.
- I have already asked the following questions in our previous interview and want you to answer them as well, so that we have an unbiased assessment of the same contest criteria. Tell me please, how did you find out about the competition, how the idea of ​​the application was born, how high was the motivation to win, are you satisfied with the organization?
- I found out about the contest, as far as I remember, just by a search query, when I was looking for some information about the LG Smart TV platform. It was somehow deposited in my head, and then one of my friends had the idea of ​​such an application. We joined the competition rather late and we were very lucky that we extended it a bit. As for the organization, everything was perfectly organized - both the competition and technical support. However, I had already been a little familiar with the St. Petersburg office in my past work, so I can say that everything was as good as ever.
- When did you start development, were you already familiar with the platform, or did you become acquainted during the creation process? What could write an application?
- By the beginning of the competition, I already had experience in developing a pair of applications for the LG platform. Therefore, it was relatively easy for me to “assess the risks” of a late start of development. Nevertheless, we experienced the main difficulties in developing the bookmarklet. So, as for the platform itself, it is simple and stable for development. We immediately stopped at the JS / HTML version, since I already had some groundwork in this area. NodeJS + MongoDB was used as a backend.
- What hardware features had to be taken into account, does the zoo of devices affect the platform’s limited hardware capabilities?
- From my past experience, I learned that the focus should be on optimizing both the code and the markup of the application. This applies to any line, but especially the 2011 model range. The application is written only in vanilla JavaScript, minimally used transparency, shadows and other CSS-beauty. For the rest, for us, the difference between the platforms affected only the user authentication method and support for some video formats.
- How is the testing process. Tell us a little about the features of the emulator, the ability to debug the application directly on TV, I know how many problems this work can cause.
- In my work, I used only the emulator from the delivery of SDK 1.5 and then - only for sighting work. Thanks to the use of HTML / JS, our application works in a regular browser, and for testing we had the opportunity to use real TVs of 2011/2012. A very useful thing is weinre , many thanks to its creators. She rescued me many times when writing applications for both SmartTV and mobile development under Apache Cordova.
- How does the process of approval and display of the application in the application store from the point of view of “user” of this system? Are there pitfalls, how many times have you returned the application for revision?
- This is where the most interesting begins. In general, the verification process is rather “bureaucratic”. This begins with the approval of the application documentation, where everything should be “very clear”. The most difficult stage is, of course, functional testing, because, no matter how hard you try, you shouldn’t notice all the moments of the nightly development of the eyes. In addition, the requirements for compliance with design guidelines are also quite tough. It is unfortunate that the Korean side does not share with the developers those test lists that it uses when checking the application - this would greatly facilitate the initial training.
- Thank you very much for your time, I give you an invite to Habr, use it, you can answer Habrayuers personally.
At the moment, more than 30 professional developers are registered in the competition.
There are no finished works yet, but this is not surprising, since the mechanics this year are completely different: first you need to develop an application, get tested and run the application on the platform, and this process is quite complicated and time-consuming. In connection, we have increased the time interval allotted for the competition, moreover, we changed the format of the event itself to give an opportunity to win for people whose applications and ideas for some reason were not seen at the last event.
Especially for the competition this year, we initiated a nomination together with our premium partner Twigl to use the partner API, using the capabilities of their content catalog or Video Publisher Cloud service . Absolutely all participants, we guarantee technical support and advice, and the winners in addition to cash prizes will receive marketing support from the company.
Thank you very much for your attention, to new meetings in the blog LG on Habré. If you do not want to miss the new materials on Smart TV - subscribe to our blog, and it is convenient for you, and we are pleased. ;)
Today we are visiting Nikolay Kochetkov, one of the developers
vTelek applications, winning the last year's competition. I asked Nikolay to answer a few questions, to tell about the application, about the mechanism of interaction with the competition and about impressions of participation in general. And his answers can be found under the cut. ;)
- Nikolai, good afternoon! Please tell us a little about yourself. Where did you study, where did you work, how did you come up with development for smart TV?
- About myself? Well, as you said, my name is Nikolai Kochetkov, I am 35 years old. Born and raised in Moscow, I graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University, Department of General Nuclear Physics.
The diploma theme was the automation of the control system of a linear electron accelerator, so I can say that I have been programming all my life.
')
He worked a lot where, but the most memorable work in RIA Novosti, where I was engaged in the front-end part of video content integration into a group of agency sites, and in general was responsible for multimedia projects. It was there that I had a chance to get acquainted with the platforms of Smart TV. Now I work in one of the companies engaged in OTT-TV directly on the Smart TV profile, in fact, my victory in the competition became the “golden key” to the door from the office. ;)
- Thank. And what about your application? :) What tasks solves, how did you come up with such an idea?
- Our application is very simple. In fact, it serves one purpose - to give the user the opportunity to watch any web video content on the big screen of Smart TV in one click. Unfortunately, due to the fragmentation of the web video platform as a whole, we cannot yet fulfill all our promises one hundred percent, and at the moment we do not support as many sources as we would like, but we are actively working on expanding the functionality.
- And what is now supported, and most importantly - how does it work?
- From 100% of the workers at the moment I can name the video VKontakte, Youtube videos, tags “video”, posted on the pages, and videos from meta tags opengraph (developed by Facebook). The scheme of the application is elementary. The user links his TV with an anonymous account on the site and receives a special bookmarklet. If a user clicks on a bookmarklet, then his code "looks through" the open page and collects all the videos placed on it. Next, the user is prompted to send the found video to the big screen:
As an intermediary between the TV and your browser is the server of our application. Through it, the link gets into the TV Widget and plays on the big screen.
- And what, really, who needs such functionality? It is available from the very Smart TV, through the browser and built-in clients. Let not in one click.
- For the current day, we have about 28 thousand clients registered in our database, of which about 80% use the application (according to Google Analytics statistics, embedded in the application). Since the project is now supported “on an optional basis,” in its spare time, unfortunately, there is not always enough time for them to fully engage and develop, however, recently we have carried out “side refactoring” server-side and fixed some “elusive” shoals emerging with a large load.
- I have already asked the following questions in our previous interview and want you to answer them as well, so that we have an unbiased assessment of the same contest criteria. Tell me please, how did you find out about the competition, how the idea of ​​the application was born, how high was the motivation to win, are you satisfied with the organization?
- I found out about the contest, as far as I remember, just by a search query, when I was looking for some information about the LG Smart TV platform. It was somehow deposited in my head, and then one of my friends had the idea of ​​such an application. We joined the competition rather late and we were very lucky that we extended it a bit. As for the organization, everything was perfectly organized - both the competition and technical support. However, I had already been a little familiar with the St. Petersburg office in my past work, so I can say that everything was as good as ever.
- When did you start development, were you already familiar with the platform, or did you become acquainted during the creation process? What could write an application?
- By the beginning of the competition, I already had experience in developing a pair of applications for the LG platform. Therefore, it was relatively easy for me to “assess the risks” of a late start of development. Nevertheless, we experienced the main difficulties in developing the bookmarklet. So, as for the platform itself, it is simple and stable for development. We immediately stopped at the JS / HTML version, since I already had some groundwork in this area. NodeJS + MongoDB was used as a backend.
- What hardware features had to be taken into account, does the zoo of devices affect the platform’s limited hardware capabilities?
- From my past experience, I learned that the focus should be on optimizing both the code and the markup of the application. This applies to any line, but especially the 2011 model range. The application is written only in vanilla JavaScript, minimally used transparency, shadows and other CSS-beauty. For the rest, for us, the difference between the platforms affected only the user authentication method and support for some video formats.
- How is the testing process. Tell us a little about the features of the emulator, the ability to debug the application directly on TV, I know how many problems this work can cause.
- In my work, I used only the emulator from the delivery of SDK 1.5 and then - only for sighting work. Thanks to the use of HTML / JS, our application works in a regular browser, and for testing we had the opportunity to use real TVs of 2011/2012. A very useful thing is weinre , many thanks to its creators. She rescued me many times when writing applications for both SmartTV and mobile development under Apache Cordova.
- How does the process of approval and display of the application in the application store from the point of view of “user” of this system? Are there pitfalls, how many times have you returned the application for revision?
- This is where the most interesting begins. In general, the verification process is rather “bureaucratic”. This begins with the approval of the application documentation, where everything should be “very clear”. The most difficult stage is, of course, functional testing, because, no matter how hard you try, you shouldn’t notice all the moments of the nightly development of the eyes. In addition, the requirements for compliance with design guidelines are also quite tough. It is unfortunate that the Korean side does not share with the developers those test lists that it uses when checking the application - this would greatly facilitate the initial training.
- Thank you very much for your time, I give you an invite to Habr, use it, you can answer Habrayuers personally.
At the moment, more than 30 professional developers are registered in the competition.
There are no finished works yet, but this is not surprising, since the mechanics this year are completely different: first you need to develop an application, get tested and run the application on the platform, and this process is quite complicated and time-consuming. In connection, we have increased the time interval allotted for the competition, moreover, we changed the format of the event itself to give an opportunity to win for people whose applications and ideas for some reason were not seen at the last event.
Especially for the competition this year, we initiated a nomination together with our premium partner Twigl to use the partner API, using the capabilities of their content catalog or Video Publisher Cloud service . Absolutely all participants, we guarantee technical support and advice, and the winners in addition to cash prizes will receive marketing support from the company.
Thank you very much for your attention, to new meetings in the blog LG on Habré. If you do not want to miss the new materials on Smart TV - subscribe to our blog, and it is convenient for you, and we are pleased. ;)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/206002/
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