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The realities of working in Smart TV application projects

In the company engaged in the release of applications for Smart TV, I started working in 2013, choosing it both on a convenient location from home (35 minutes by bike, 8 km), and on an interesting range of tasks that comprised IPTV and Smart TV - projects .

Since then, developers and customers often ask me about the features of working in the environment of the browser engine Smart TV , I have to repeat not very simple, but interesting features that listeners would like to know and have on hand as a reference. The format of the article, I think, is ideal for information on this topic, especially since the developers from other groups and cities also provided the community with such reviews. Combining knowledge will add the necessary picture of the scattered puzzles of individual views. We will coordinate their assembly together, and ...

programming under Smart TV , and, of course, evidence and justifications for this whole thing.

To begin with, we will consider hardware platforms with which it is necessary to deal. These are not 5 browsers, but, in fact, two (Opera 10-11 and Webkit, but slightly different versions, and with content display features). Which platform is useful to pay attention in the first place?
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Review of vendors (manufacturers) of TVs with smart TV functions


Sometimes such TVs are compared with smartphones, meaning not the size, but the built-in computer with a browser. Consider the major manufacturers in the market of TVs with Smart TV .

The ratio of TV manufacturers' shares is easy to assess in terms of the LCD TV market indicators for 2010 - the year when mass smart TV models were introduced into the model lines, primarily in the Samsung camp (Fig. 1.1).
Here we see that Philips is not at all. This is explained by the fact that the statistics about him as a European producer was simply not included - the original article was in Japanese and reflected not so much the market as the dynamics of the arrival of LCD TV on the market and other types of exit from it, first of all - CRT.
According to other data , for 2011-2012, the shares are:
We see that Samsung has significantly increased its market share, and the rest of the players remained in it in approximately equal proportions.

A rather recent review for January 2013 describes the state of the Russian TV sales market . Excel on them draws the following picture:
True, it is not clear from the text who collected the information and for what data, but they forgot to mention the Panasonic share.

Platform features versus user needs


What is interesting Smart TV ? This is an opportunity to create applications, something like mobile PhoneGap, but working on TVs with Smart TV functions. This means that only frontend technologies are used, approximately the same as in browser extensions, with their own portion of features. Most often, these are applications for viewing and selecting movies, videos, news. Rarely - games, because the power of the processor modules is approximately 10% of the power of computers, and the memory of the module is 300-600 MB, which is often less than that of mobile phones.

And the main thing is that we are writing the application not in Si or Java, but in Java script, which determines the weakness of the platform. To the speed drop by an order of magnitude (10 times) compared to computers, a slowdown is added by 5 times compared to native applications in Objective C / C ++ or Java. This is the price of simplifying the development environment. But the fun is not the point. And the fact that mastering the development environment is also needed additional efforts.

That is, by and large - applications on Smart TV - is much worse and slower than the same ones working on computers. Even the screen resolution in models of 2012-2013 is 1280x720, and 2010-2011 from Samsung supported 960x540. Their justification begins only when the customer decides to have a TV in the app store (vendors from LG, Samsung, Philips, Sony have their own different stores, the rules for registering in which are different). Then the user just find it and click on the icon for installation. The same happiness for the user - to find a free interesting "chip" for watching movies, and the joy for business customers - another carefree user got into their advertising networks.

The real life of Smart TV applications begins where you need to combine multimedia controls (videos, videos, photos, audio, texts in HTML) in HTML5 format and poor control buttons on the remote control that express the needs of the user in a chair or on the couch 3 meters from the screen .

Separately, games or separate applications that are better and faster to do and run on a laptop or tablet - this is a mistake, the cost of funds, justified only by attempts to break into the advertising field of users. But business strategists should not forget what a scanty stream will remain of those who, through a sieve of accidents, will reach your application - those few lucky ones who have a number of restrictions coincided:

And here he is in front of you - almost a loyal user. Yes, he still should not forget about your application among 30 others, which he, of course, put, and of course, should remember it as something useful. Do not forget that all this is not happening in front of the computer screen, where the developer and the business analyst are used to watching half his life. This is a TV that draws on colors and leisure opportunities, dramas of TV shows and whirlwinds of news.

Your weapon against them is a remote with tight rubber buttons and a memory of a user who is relaxed from the labors of the day, does not consider the TV to be anything better than a computer, which he most likely has.

Well, realized the field in which you ventured to succeed? Wait, that's not all. In addition to dealing with the needs, there will be a struggle with more advanced environmental technology. There will not find it a little. You need to not only wade through the control panel to the user, but also somehow convince him that Smart TV is better than a computer. Especially if he does not choose the TV channel or watch the video, but something has to type (on the virtual keyboard, yes).

Features of the equipment in comparison with competing technologies


The article, in theory, should praise and show the glaring interest in developing applications for Smart TV , but let's be honest professionals and objectively describe their flaws . Let's start with the largest group, because it is more noticeable.

A list of the anti-merits of smart TVs :Advantages :

And pay attention - these 2 lists push you not to “eat the cactus”, but to choose another solution. Any Chinese smartphone is more powerful than 2 times more than any of the consoles, it is just the difference in cost between “smart” and unintelligent TVs, has additional full functionality, huge unclipped screens, shows movies and music from photos, is not limited to javascript, sometimes has micro -HDMI on the case. Or instead - SlimPort or MHL, which for some models has an adapter with the ability to form an HDMI signal.

A brief educational program on TV


SlimPort , an analogue of MHL technology, is designed to connect Nexus, LG, ASUS, Fujitsu smartphones to TVs with HDMI, it provides all the features of MHL. Plug & Play connection. The display device must have an HDMI input.

List of devices with the SlimPort port:

Over time, it will obviously expand.

Connect SlimPort to TV:


MHL - a slightly earlier competing technology with the same effect: one connector and one adapter solves almost all communication problems of a smartphone in order to connect it to a TV or monitor in particular.

Unsuccessful modularization


It is easy to predict another modularization movement that would help users and reduce vendors' revenues: make TV tuners with quality, like those of televisions, but in a separate unit. There are such tuners, but they traditionally do not reach TV quality in all respects. In addition, it is - modules. The modules are the size of a book, and it is difficult to reduce them to a smartphone without losing even more quality - there are a number of smartphones with built-in TV from the Chinese, but they have never been of acceptable quality. But 3 modules: a smartphone, a tuner, a monitor - would perfectly arrange the same Smart TV inclusive, but of much higher quality and convenience.

And the most disadvantageous for vendors is that these modules will age in parts. The monitor can serve for years, the smartphone can change once every couple of years, and the tuner - serve for decades, while the standards of television signals are alive. But for the user, modularization turns out to be more profitable. Unfortunately, the modules are not released, they will have to do themselves. And this is what can replace one, but a big headache - Smart TV .

A business analyst through whom a customer pays you money for work in the womb of this remarkable technology is at the entrance with Occam's razor and calculates: until what moment the technology, squeezed in the clutches of competitors, will be so profitable that the businessman will not block you or him, the analyst faucet The thought of the worthlessness of the cause of all life comes, as always, the last, and then fate will be cut to the quick, short and merciless. When a businessman understands that you played in the sandbox instead of building spaceships, and even not interested in the 11th user, who had to peck on the advertising banner ... Get ready to write a memoir about the exciting usefulness of the technology, which you have devoted in recent years.

Back to our application


On a computer module, it is written as a mobile application or similar to the expansion of the browser. But it works on a specialized embedded browser engine - Webkit from LG, Opera 11 from Samsung 2011-2012. Not in the browser shell to view the Internet, which is usually in the arsenal of TV applications as a separate application. There are dozens of API methods in functions that allow not only to program DOM on JS, but also to view photos and video-audio, to work with the file system and with a virtual keyboard, which usually overlaps the TV screen by 40%.

And in these “combat” conditions, I came to the development of an application for a well-known state organization. Among such architectures, the developer organization (contractor) had several similarly arranged applications for IPTV - consoles, in many respects similar to Smart TV modules. They also have a JS engine, more often Webkit of different assemblies (some worse, for example, due to the non-inclusion of error patches, but you can communicate with the vendor - some Russian or Chinese company that makes these consoles, Dune, for example, or Stream- TV from MTS), so that they update the users' firmware to fix memory leaks, say. When communicating, LG vendors also helped with tips on the undocumented capabilities of their API, but they cannot change the engine itself - it changes only for new TVs of the next year, and only recently some manufacturers (Samsung) started switching to removable Smart TV modules, in fact, everything more turning them into set-top boxes. It is theoretically able to allow the firmware update through the update of the set-top box by the user. But in practice, the matter will rather not come to this, and the modules' removability will help to update them again, in new models of sold TV. After all, the main functions of the TV work without it, and the “smart” functions, which are always in the wake of progress - this, as we shall see, is not the most important thing on the TV.

Let's take a closer look at the manufacturers and their products. Enemy need to know in person.

Samsung


Fig. 1. Typical shell Samsung Smart TV (SmartHub) 2012 (background can be changed)


Fig. 1.2. Samsung Smart TV - Favorite Oriental Size


Fig. 1.3. Samsung 2013, Smart TV . The interface is somewhat simpler;
no need to log in with the login “develop” for the developer


LG


Fig. 2. LG Apps in Smart TV - LG TV


Fig. 2.2 Blondes and Smart TV Interface - LG TV


Stop, did you notice how the remote control is controlled not by this bright one with an extended finger, but by the most savvy in the technique, on the left? In addition to the usual native "male" console with a lot of buttons, lost among thousands of others, LG right in the delivery package sells a gyroscopic anatomical console, so organically lying in female hands. The movement of the console in space is accompanied by the movement of the mouse pointer on the screen, which makes navigating easy both in the store and on the pages of the integrated browser.

An ordinary remote control also controls the mouse, but buttons in 10-pixel increments (Figure 2.5).


In the new models, they enclose another format of the gyro panel in LG (Fig. 2.5):


Philips


The second player in the market of televisions and audio-video-electronics. In early 2013, there was a sensational report about the sale of this part of the business of the Japanese company Funai. In September of the same year, the opposite, no less interesting phenomenon: Funai did not cope with its obligations under the contract, and Philips broke the contract, created a subsidiary company WOOX Innovations , which will deal with all of its electronics, and plans to recover the damage caused by non-observance of the contract partner
Fig. 3. Philips Smart TV


Sony



Fig. 4. Example of a fragment of the Sony Smart TV application store
Among the applications there are “recommended”, which the vendor shows in their sections as examples of applications, and there are “all the rest”, whose manufacturers did not try to make the application so advertised or meaningful to get into the “recommended”. “All others” can be found only by searching by keywords, and, possibly, by persistently viewing sections of applications or a long list of “Featured” (“Best”). The situation is not very different from the Android or AppStore, except that we will not always see the separate lists “Best free” and “Best paid”. However, more often than not, applications are free - after all, to convince a user to buy something for one particular TV, which you cannot put in your pocket, and which becomes obsolete every year - you have to somehow motivate and excite the excitement, or something.

Apple TV and Google TV


In the end, according to chronology, it is necessary to mention the technology of Apple TV (they started, as always, a little earlier, in 2007) and Google TV (2010 and only in the plans). Now Sony, continuing to wave the banners of Smart TV , raised the trough of the NSZ-GS7 to the pedestal in 2012.
(eng.)
It should be noted that at least a couple of fresh ideas are collected in the device's remote control - a relief keyboard on one side and a touchpad on the other (can they move and blindly?).



Apple TV Network Media Player (2011)
Announced in September 2006, Apple TV was a compact computer with a built-in hard disk that had a single application running — inherited from Mac OS X multimedia shell Front Row. It should be noted that in capable hands this device was capable of much greater feats.

And in 2010, the second version of the set-top box saw the light, which was distinguished by a noticeably smaller size, iOS platform, the presence of only digital interfaces and operation exclusively in the network mode.


Network media player Apple TV. The third generation, the model of 2012 We give a brief quote from the reviews to show the purpose of this device.
... Apple TV hardware is the twin iPhone 4.

Changes that allowed to provide 1080p playback, is to install a new processor and double the amount of RAM, up to 512 MB. The amount of flash memory preserved (8 GB). The processor in the new model is installed in the same family as in the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. Only here are the cores - one. Given the single-tasking use of the player, this is not at all critical, and the “ordinary” Apple A5 is quite enough here. The basis of the radio module is a Broadcom BCM4330 microcircuit.

For the domestic user, the most interesting is the work in the “Home collection” mode with access to the content hosted on a PC with iTunes installed.

Apple TV is an excellent solution for the task of watching videos on the big screen of your TV, if the media library is presented in iTunes or there is a need to broadcast multimedia, programs or games from mobile devices. The player has a very attractive design, is well-made and costs relatively little ($ 99 in the US)

Determined by the content format in the company store and the current capabilities of the Internet, limiting the resolution of the video output to 720p is perhaps the most significant drawback of the considered model today and it is unlikely that it will be fixed in the future with new firmware. Despite the fact that, most likely, it is technically possible, Apple will be more profitable to release a new device, while at the same time implementing some more hardware innovations in it, rather than correcting this shortcoming in the old one. So you need to recognize that if you want to ensure the maximum quality of the picture - Apple TV is not for you. At the same time, the “official” users of the product will not notice this restriction, as only 720p format is available to them today (short of their own Full HD video from a PC and photos).

in fact, in the face of Apple TV in 2012, we have an inexpensive and elegantly made IPTV set-top box that has multimedia and gaming capabilities at the level of iPhone 4S / iPad 2. This product is a little out of the scope of the considered Smart TV and looks more like an IPTV set-top box Dune. Unlike them, it is not attached to the provider and can work as a media center.

For development, obviously, you need to use the software and licenses of Apple, as well as other programs for development for iPad / iPhone. You can restrict to PhoneGap-like frameworks to stay in the frontend technologies, but standard Xcode and iOS 7 SDK are also available .

In the past 2 years (since the appearance of the third Apple TV version. Yes, yes, 2 years, as Apple TV has not been updated!) Rumors are circulating about the preparation of a new product - Apple iTV ( rumors about TV (rus.) , About partners ( rus.) )). What is most interesting, it can appear in the form of a TV and in the form of a TV service (or both). With the advent of this product, the shelf of lightweight application development technologies will most likely come, and then ignore Apple products in the light of Smart TV reviews - such technologies will not succeed. There are rumors about the future of Apple TV SDK.


What time to draw conclusions?


The volume of data on the TV market is very large, and there are not always principles of rationality and perfection. This is capitalism, baby, and therefore, at every corner of the regional supermarket, we can expect anything.

As we have noticed, in contrast to the classic areas of the business of IT devices (phones, cameras, computers, laptops, tablets), the manufacturers and the users themselves have not decided in what format they would like to use computerized TVs. Everyone sees that the figure penetrates everywhere. Only the transmit-receive paths and, perhaps, sound paths remained analogous. All image processing is in the figure. It is reasonable to connect all the related to it - video, photos, texts (hi, grandfather, teletext). And use the TV as a monitor - why not, if it is a monitor? Consumers are ready to raise any of the ideas to heaven and pay like an ideal dream, although all other ideas will be implemented mediocre.

You can make a mediocre cheap screen, but stick on the side to add a smartphone from 960 to 540 at first, compensate the price, and throw it on for innovation. Money users will sweep away the new Samsung 2009 with Smart TV and throw up the previous Connected TV brands and the like. And in 2011, they will take for granted the new smartphone, already on self-tapping screws and with a screen of 1280 by 720.

Then they will have nowhere to go, because competitors will begin to rivet the same thing, but in one bottle. But even without Full HD, everyone wants to save on the power of the chips in the smartphone, and grateful users allow it by paying for new models at a higher rate every year.

Vivid confirmation of such thoughts - in another article and the first comments to it.
All these SmartTVs are tricks. When I decided to buy a LCD TV, there was a thought about Smart. But after studying the functional, I decided to take the most "stupid" TV and put a whistle with an android into it. It turned out much more functional! zKeep


Maybe not to sit on the "needle" Smart TV ?


In connection with this general state of affairs, it is much more convenient to solve the issue of a home collection of applications in a different way. In fact, if you already have a Smart TV and an internet connection (there are usually both LAN and WiFi), then it would not hurt to walk through the app store, download some interesting free apps, and those that don't like it - delete them (they are stored on flash memory). USB; even if you are a developer, you will need to create a web server on the local network in order to download from it a specially designed application that is located in the Flash USB memory).But if there is a question - what to buy, just TV without Smart TV or with it, a new model for 20 thousand or an old one for 13 thousand, or no Smart at all for 9 thousand, that is, alternatives that play at all in favor of Smart TV .

And all because there are gadgets such as smartphones, tablets, which are often HDMI connectors (which is 1920x1080, and not the unfortunate 1280x720 from Smart TV ). Including - thoroughbred "Chinese" at prices from 3.5 thousand with a small screen to

8.5 - Nexus 7 (2013) (to TV - via the adapter SlimPort - HDMI),
9 - Ainol 9 Novo (10 "20481536, microHDMI),
15 - ASUS MeMO Pad FHD 10 ME302KL 16Gb, microHDMI,
18Thousands (Apple iPad 4 64Gb Wi-Fi with connection to TV through a special HDMI adapter ).

Such tablets or even smartphones are often found with the FullHD screen (including 2048x1536). In the latter case, the same picture will be displayed 1920x1080, which allows you to display the HDMI interface and the screen resolution of the TV. But for different models there may be artifacts when viewing or playing games. For example, in the HDMI image, there are often three filamentous interface buttons (“output”, “desktop” and something else) that can be understood on the tablet (for the touch interface), but it is completely useless for TV. Please note that a FullHD picture remains controllable from a smartphone / tablet, and not a stripped down 1280x720, as for Smart TV .

And what about the application? Did or jumped?


Oh yes, applications. Applications did. I especially liked that, as in the case of browser extensions, the application was almost entirely closed in browser technologies, although up to 4 people took part in the project, all in different parts of the same application. Rarely, when there are applications without a backend at all. And the analysis above showed that in the field of Smart TV they are of little use - what the customer would say, paying a lot of money. And the rest - the application as an application, with its structure, structure and inheritance of objects, as in similar applications for IPTV consoles. Working with them helped to clarify some details of the framework, the patterns that will be applied to other, subsequent projects.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/216155/

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