The Smart TV Alliance will launch a Common Developer Portal on May 1,
2014, that includes a Joint Application Developers Agreement and a
Premium Developer Support Program. Currently, app developers need to
negotiate a separate developer contract for each individual manufacturer
in order to publish content. The Smart TV Alliance will overcome those
inefficiencies with a single developer contract for publishing apps to
all of the STA compliant devices.
“The new Common Developer Portal shows Smart TV Alliance apps are market
ready for manufacturers, solution providers and consumers on a variety
of televisions and devices,” said Seijiro Yasuki, President of Smart TV
Alliance and Chief Technology Executive of Digital Products & Services
Company, Toshiba. “It encourages a vibrant smart TV ecosystem and
removes the barriers to application development while enhancing the
smart TV experience for consumers.”
Premium Developer Support Program
The Smart TV Alliance announced its Developer Support Program at IFA
2013, which made the app qualification cycle more efficient by providing
a joint manufacturer QA process. The Premium Developer Support Program
will also provide developers the ability to publish their apps to
various manufacturers' app stores after passing the Joint QA process in
one integrated process.
SDK 3.0
The new software development kit provides app developers with emulation
and app validation for Smart TV Alliance specification v3.0, including
updated HTML5 and CSS features, the new device capability API and, based
on developer feedback, optional features such as numeric keys, color
keys and multi-audio. The SDK is backwards compatible and Smart TV
Alliance specification v2.0 and v2.5 are selectable for application
emulation and validation. Developers will find the SDK and additional
developer resources, including the latest application development
guidelines, on a newly updated developer portal (http://developers.smarttv-alliance.org)
that offers step-by-step assistance for Smart TV Alliance app
development.
Smart TVs in the Smart Home
The Smart TV Alliance is expanding its coverage to connect smart TVs to
the smart home. It published a white paper today that outlines the Smart
TV Alliance’s smart home capabilities (http://developers.smarttv-alliance.org/specification).
A smart TV is one of the most intelligent and easy-to-use home
appliances, giving it an important role in the smart home. The Smart TV
Alliance Smart Home specification is based on open standards, including
WebSocket, JSON, HTML5, and JavaScript, to ensure compatibility with the
greatest number of smart home devices worldwide. With smart home
features, applications running on a Smart TV Alliance platform can
control and interact with connected devices at home to optimize the
consumer’s smart TV experience.
“The open standards-based Smart Home specification is a valuable tool
that can extend the range of supported devices,” said Simon Jeon, Head
of Home Appliances and Air-Conditioning & Energy Solution R&D Center, LG
Electronics. “As WebSocket and JSON are widely used in many areas,
developers can easily use those technologies to make smart home-enabled
applications.”
New Member
Shenzhen TCL New Technology has joined the Smart TV Alliance. TCL is the
No. 1 smart TV manufacturer in China and ranks No. 4 worldwide,
significantly increasing the Smart TV Alliance’s installed base.
Smart TV Alliance CES 2014 Event
The Smart TV Alliance will host “Smart TV Alliance 2014: Expanding the
Smart TV Ecosystem” at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas today from 5 to 6:30
p.m. during CES International 2014.
The Smart TV Alliance event will include the Alliance’s 2014 plans for
the “Build Once, Run Everywhere” ecosystem and will demonstrate smart
home and Smart TV Alliance compatible apps.
Contact the Smart TV Alliance at news@SmartTV-Alliance.org
to request an invitation to the event.
About Smart TV Alliance
Founders LG Electronics, TP Vision and Toshiba established the Smart TV
Alliance in 2012 to create attractive, platform-independent services for
Smart TV applications. Smart TV Alliance's mission is to create a large
and productive ecosystem for Smart TV application development that gives
manufacturers a faster path to more and better TV applications, enables
developers to write applications once for many different platforms, and
provides consumers with a rich source of content and services. For more
information about the Alliance, visit http://www.SmartTV-Alliance.org.
For more information about the development environment, visit https://developers.smarttv-alliance.org.
Copyright Business Wire 2014