laurence moroney: welcometo the googleplex. today we're going to betalking with alan huang. he's here from theandroid tv team that brings androidinto your living room and allows you as anapplication developer
Android TV emulator, to reach people intheir living room. android tv is oneof these products that i think we all knowa little bit about it, but maybe we don't knowexactly what it is,
so could you tell usexactly what is android tv? allen huang: whatwe're really doing with android tv is we'rebringing android, this os that is widely popularand people are super familiar with because they'reusing it on a day-to-day basis all the time, and bring thatexperience to the living room and across a variety ofdevices on actual smart tvs that you're buying, you know,60 inch televisions, as well as boxes that you connectto your television,
whether that's a box that'scoming from whoever's giving you your cable televisionor a box you're connecting to stream different content. laurence moroney: cool. now, one of my favorite featuresin android is google now. that gives me likepersonalized recommendations. and one of my problemswith tv at the moment is that there's so manydifferent, either channels on cable or differentsources of on demand video
and trying to find what i wantto watch is really difficult. is there some kindof recommendation engine that thinks aboutwhat i like to watch and maybe bubbles thatto the top in android tv? allen huang: one ofour big focus areas when we were thinking aboutwhat android tv should be was, we centered aroundthis concept of, when you get home after a long day atwork, your iq almost goes down, right?
you're sitting infront of the tv. the last thing youwant to think about is, ok, what ami going to watch? and look througha ton of listings and try to just figureall of that out. and so what we've doneis, the centerpiece of the home screen on androidtv is this recommendation show. and what we're doingthere is combining a few pieces of information.
we're taking all of the stuffthat the apps that you have, the tv providers that you have,taking all of that information and then mixing ittogether to showcase, ok, what are the things that wethink you'll want to watch. the apps providethese recommendations. and then we sort ofrank based on what apps you've been using in the past. laurence moroney: ok. cool.
now, i understand thatyou were down in las vegas at ces, launching some androidtv stuff quite recently. and we all know howcrazy ces can be. but what happened? what did you do? what did you launch? what was going on? allen huang: for android tv,the main reason we were there was helping support ourpartners as they were launching
the first reallyandroid tv devices that are going to be outside ofour own nexus player device. and so, what we sawwas sony announcing that their entire bravia 2kand 4k tvs in this coming 2015 line-- they're all goingto be running android tvs. so sharp also announcedthat their 4k televisions would be running android tv. and then razer is workingon a gaming console that's running on androidtv and features
a wide variety of games. and they actuallywon the best of ces in the gaming category, as wellas the people's choice award. and we have thesepartners developing these incredible deviceson the android tv platform. for me, it was reallyexciting to see. laurence moroney:yeah, that sounds cool. now, you mentionedthe gaming console. is that out yet oris that coming soon?
allen huang: razer isworking hard in order and we're getting tothat point where that should be coming very soon. laurence moroney:now my understanding is because that runs androidtv, it has a version of the play store so then anybodywho can build a game and put it intothe play store now has a console thatthey can build for. allen huang: yeah, theexperience for a developer
is that play store works muchthe same way that you would expect on a phone or a tablet. you're using the same playstore developer console. you're creatingjust android apps, with a different interface,with a different ui. but really it's thesame android api. it's the same androiddevelopment model. and it's just going totransfer from device to device. laurence moroney: ok, so if i'man existing android developer,
building for phones and maybebuilding for tablets, then if i want to reach theform factor of the tv, i'm pretty muchusing the same apis? allen huang: yeah absolutely. i mean, android tvis on lollipop, just like every other device. and all of theapis that you know and love that you'reusing already, they're just goingto work, right?
like one of the bigdifferences with android tv, compared with theother efforts, is that we're on the same cycleas phone, as tablet, as ware, as auto, and i think we talkabout how if the android tv team doesn't finish thework that we need to finish, we're going to delay everything. all of android is-- laurence moroney: no pressure. allen huang: yeah,no, no pressure.
we're a core part there. and so with that comesjust tons of benefits. it makes a lot ofsense for developers. laurence moroney: cool, cool. so now there mustbe some differences though when building forthe leanback form factor, the tv as opposed to the smalldevice that's in your hand. like what kind of challengesdo you see developers facing and what have youdone to help them?
allen huang: one youdon't have a touch screen. maybe one day, our partners aregoing to build a touch screen tv and that'll be really cool. but for the mostpart, these tvs are things that are you'reinteracting with a d-pad. so left, right, up,down, center click. you'll have the backand home that you have on every android device. and that's the basic interactionmodel, and it's very simple.
it matches that sortof whole mentality of, i'm in front of my living room. i'm not reallythinking that hard. i don't want a computing device,i want an entertainment device. the other thing beyondsort of the interaction is that you are sitting 10feet away from this screen. and you know thefont sizes need to be the size that they need to be. all the images that are onscreen need to be bigger,
and you need to think aboutthem being more cinematic. and people have acertain expectation of, on television things beingsort of moving, and cinematic, and it being that sortof engaging experience. and so, that's allthings that we're thinking very carefully aboutas we're developing android tv. as far as what we'vedone for developers, we've tried to make thisreally easy for them. and so we have this modelof having support libraries
that we've publishedand made available along with the android sdk tomake it really easy for people to just have that sort ofui and interaction model. so these support librariesprovide almost sort of templates that people couldplug in their information, take their android tabletapp, and plug that in and have this rich, engaging, immersiveui, and have it displayed, and have all the transitionsand animations that i was talking about.
from there, a developer cantake that and run with it and publish it to playstore almost immediately. or they can do lots ofthings like customize it, sort of make it theirbrand, take those and then just build upon that. and then we also have developersthat will start totally from scratch. they're like, oh hey, yeah,this support library is great, but i'd rather justcreate a whole experience.
and they're justdeveloping an android app. laurence moroney: that'skind of mind blowing when you think about it. that when, in the past if you'rebuilding for a tv set-top box or for a console, it was anentirely different world. what you're bringing nowis the same world into it. and yes, there are somedifferences, of course, but you're trying to mitigatethe difficulties that might come from those differences.
what about like anykind of scenarios for interesting types of apps? allen huang: i'm reallyexcited about what's to come, what developers are going to do. for phones and tablets, peoplewho built the operating system never imagined, sort of thepossibilities of what people would go and createand have become just absurdly popular-- ways for youto get picked up from anywhere and be able to takeyou to any other place.
other really amazingstuff that i've seen is, so dish justannounced their sling app that you can have physical thissubscription experience where you're getting a coreset of channels, getting, for me, like the espn,all of that is amazing. i've seen really fun apps. e24 is a good example,where they've made it so that you can actuallyorder food from your tv screen and order it and have itdelivered to your home.
it sort of runs the gamut. our team's goal is toprovide the tools for people to build whatever theycan imagine and then see where it goes from there. laurence moroney: i'mwaiting for the 3d printer that can print a pizza. and order that through my tv. allen huang: yeah,immediate delivery. laurence moroney: thatwould be crazy so thinking
of like developers, and we'resaying that like the experience is very familiar. as an android developer, do youhave any words like for anybody who wants to get started today? maybe they're not anandroid developer already or maybe they've beenbuilding for phones. what advice would you give tofolks who want to get started? allen huang: absolutely takea look at our support library. the feedback we get from a lotof developers is like, oh man,
that was a lot easieri thought it would be. and just to getstarted that way, messing aroundand experimenting, and trying a few thingsout, especially when we've provided someof the basic templates so that you don't haveto worry about that. i think it goes a long way. being quite honest,there are lots of apps that aren't verygood, but at the very least,
you're developing out theskills, the experience, and then it's like sort of aniterative process, i think. laurence moroney: and weare really only at day zero. right? there's great stuffstill to come. and try, if you're goingto fail, try again. if you're going to fail,try again and just keep getting better incrementally. i mean for developers.
so actually one questionthat i had, i was thinking, because i've played alittle bit with development, but i have like the hardware. i mean, is there like anemulator or something like that so if people don'thave the hardware, that they can see what thingswould look like on a tv? allen huang: so aspart of android studio, and all those tools, we have theemulator available for android tv, alongside all aboutemulators that you have,
so you can see that experience. we had the adt-1 giveaway and hopefully many of the early developersgot their hands on one and were able tostart development using this device that weinternally know and love because we used itfor quite awhile just to get people started. laurence moroney:so we've had a lot of success in the livingroom with chromecast,
which is a fabulous product. but how does that fitin with android tv, in particular from adeveloper perspective? what should developersbe thinking about? allen huang: cast has beenincredibly successful in sort of introducing this newmodel for how people interact with their living room. tying back to what i saidabout the living room being this really simple space,where people aren't looking
for computing devices, beingable to take something and so easily throw itonto your screen, it's just veryintuitive for people. laurence moroney: it's magical. allen huang: yeah, exactly. it is. i mean, i've heardpeople say that. it's like, oh, my god,how did that happen? and it's somethingwe want to continue.
i think thatinteraction model, we baked google cast as acore part of android tv. so everything that workswith the chromecast, you're able to take that andthen cast, pick up your phone and then cast it toany android tv device. then from a developerperspective, you have these twomodels where you're developing thiscast-integrated experience, as well as this androidtv app, and developers
are going to ask, well,that seems like there's a lot of stuff going on. one of the keythings is that you want to be able to interactwith your service, your app, in a variety of different ways. you have this firstscreen app, this on phones, and forsimilar reasons why you want to have atablet experience too, that's why you'd wantto have a tv experience.
so if you're juststreaming content, casting make a lot of sense. and having that experiencegets you the ability to get your content on all thechromecast devices, as well as all the android tv devices. but then beyondthat, if you want to have suggestions onscreen or recommendations or integration into search,or just even like auto playing to thenext video or being
able to show multiplevideocasts at once, i think that's where you havethis android tv native app experience. but as a developer,if i've invested in the skills and buildingfor cast, they're not wasted. allen huang: yeah. laurence moroney: i can continuebuilding for android tv. i could just extendmy skills set. yeah.
totally. allen huang: i'm soexcited to see what they're going to come up with. and you know, personally,i joined this team about a year ago and the livingroom is an exciting space. i think it's rightbefore-- i mean, we are alreadyseeing lots and lots of changes in thisenvironment and ecosystem. more and more people arejust streaming content.
and-- laurence moroney: cord-cuttingis becoming commonplace, right? allen huang: yeah, absolutely. and there's a memethat people are just moving all their time to tabletsand to phones and to computers. at least for me, i stillwatch like multiple hours of television every day. laurence moroney:absolutely, me too. allen huang: for me, this isalmost embarrassing to say,
i fall asleep to thetelevision quite often. i think there's room forso much progress in how we watch television. but just keeping inmind like, hey, this is about making itsimple and easy. and for me, that's areally fun challenge. well, thanks, allen. and this has been a reallyfun chat that we've had. and everybody,thanks for watching
this episode of "coffee witha googler" with allen huang. we spoke about android tv. we learned aboutall the great ways we can get started withdeveloping for android tv, using our existingandroid skills.
we have some links afterthe end of the video and they'll be in thedescription below. and again, thank you somuch, allen, for coming. allen huang: yeah,cool thank you.
