Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The Multi-Screen APIs focus on three main features:
Discover
: The mobile APIs provide the ability to discover a compatible
Samsung TV from your mobile application.
Connect
: The mobile applications can connect to your TV application.
Connections are based on web sockets and provide bi-directional,
reliable, and fast communication.
Communicate
: Once connected, each device has awareness of all other
devices connected. This allows one device to send messages to any
other device, or group of devices, including the TV.
To use the Multi-Screen SDK with Android you need:
Your PC or Mac connected to the internet.
Eclipse or Android Studio with the Android SDK installed.
A text editor or suitable IDE for editing HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files
for developing TV applications.
You can download the Multi-Screen SDK at
http://multiscreen.samsung.com/downloads/
Let's now discuss briefly the future of Google TV.
Google TV: The Beginning
With the rise of smart TVs, Google and others have taken the initiative to combine the best
of the Web and TV into a single entertainment unit. Thus Google TV was born. Gaming
consoles like the XBox and PlayStation had the upper hand, trying to become the main
source of entertainment in the living room by providing games, e-mail, movies, and basic
Internet services. Nevertheless, Internet TV is rising up to challenge consoles for living room
dominance. It is worth mentioning that Google TV is not the only Internet TV offer available
out there; there is also AppleTV, Roku, offerings by Samsung, and others. However, this
section explores why you should develop for Google TV.
Google TV was built on top of Android 3.2. Here is what Google TV could do:
Run on the Android operating system Honeycomb version 3.2.
Provide the tools and APIs for developing applications in the Java
programming language.
Lack a touchscreen input device. Instead, applications are typically
controlled with a remote control.
Include a live TV Android application that displays the live TV signal.
Have a Channel Listing content provider to offer a table of stations and
channels for the configured signal provider.
