watching tv should be easy but way too often getting to your contentisn't easy at all android tvs solve this problemby allowing users to easily search with their voice, see the recommendations, and jump between content and games
Android TV leanback, just as easily as they do on their phones and for developers, if you've alreadybuilt an android app for the phone, you're just a few enhances away from working on your tv as well
hello, i'm timothy jordanand this is an introduction to android tv i'm going to give you a very quick overview of android tv and how easy it is to bringyour content to the living room. let's start with the creative vision for android tv, which will help you understand the difference between building on something, like a phone, and building for the tv to sum this up quickly, you want to create
an experience that is ..casual, cinematic, and simple by casual we mean that it should be easy going tv is not work picture yourself hanging out with your friends in the living room, watching a movie, playing a game, or just listening to some music. in a cinematic act, the interface should fade away,putting content front, and centre. tell your story with pictures and sound
instead of text and menus. and finally, everything should be so simple that it feels magical minimize steps, avoid text entry just get the user to their content. android tv gives you the tools to easily extend your existingapp or game, or create new ones just for the big screen. the most important thing to remember here
is that, "its android" it's the same platform that you've already used to build your phone apps in fact, most of that codecan be used for the tv apps as well. it can even be in the same apk here are the differences; first, you've got to declare the activity that's intended to run on the tv. this is done on the manifest.
second, you want to update your ui to use the lean back support library it's not strictly required,but in most cases it'll be silly not to use it, because it makes it building a great tv ui easy with widgets such as, browse fragment, details fragment, and search fragment. the leanback library depends on recycler view and the v4 support library recyclerview gives you classes for
managing the display of long listsin a memory efficient manner super important for tv interphases and of course, the v4 support library gives you all sorts of goodies. the third and final step is to make your app and content available to the user. with the activity declared at the manifest, your app will already show up in the apps or games section. however, there's also the opportunity
for your content to appearin the recommendations row and through search. the recommendations rowis the central feature of the home screen it gives users quick accessto dynamic and a relevant content it's essentially a bunch ofcards that represent a system or app action, notification,activity, or piece of media. you'll extend intense serviceto provide suggestions for the recommendationrow, which will
help get your content noticed. search is importanttoo, because users often have specific content in mind,and browsing for that content is usually not the fastestor easiest way to find it. however, you canadd a search action in your app, whichyou should do. but why stop there? you can also definea content provider to make your content availableto android tvs' global search.
android tv brings theandroid platform to the living room. rich content, entertainingapps, and gaming across devices are now possiblein the living room by extending the apps youalready have for the phone. to get started bringingyour service to the tv, check out the documentationand code lab as well
as these other devbytes on theleanback library and search. i'm timothy jordan,and i look forward
to seeing your appon tvs everywhere. [music playing]
