Via ars technica
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At the Google I/O conference earlier this year, Google revealed that
the Android Market would come to the Google TV set-top platform. Some
evidence of the Honeycomb-based Google TV refresh surfaced in June when screenshots from developer hardware were leaked. Google TV development is now being opened to a broader audience.
In a post on the official Google TV blog, the search giant has announced the availability of a Google TV add-on
for the Android SDK. The add-on is an early preview that will give
third-party developers an opportunity to start porting their
applications to Google TV.
The SDK add-on will currently only work on Linux desktop systems
because it relies on Linux's native KVM virtualization system to provide
a Google TV emulator. Google says that other environments will be
supported in the future. Unlike the conventional phone and tablet
versions of Android, which are largely designed to run on ARM devices,
the Google TV reference hardware uses x86 hardware. The architecture
difference might account for the lack of support in Android's
traditional emulator.
We are planning to put the SDK add-on to the test later this week so
we can report some hands-on findings. We suspect that the KVM-based
emulator will offer better performance than the conventional Honeycomb
emulator that Google's SDK currently provides for tablet development.
In addition to the SDK add-on, Google has also published a detailed user interface design guideline document
that offers insight into best practices for building a 10-foot
interface that will work will on Google TV hardware. The document
addresses a wide range of issues, including D-pad navigation and
television color variance.
The first iteration of Google TV flopped in the market and didn't see
much consumer adoption. Introducing support for third-party
applications could make Google TV significantly more compelling to
consumers. The ability to trivially run applications like Plex could
make Google TV a lot more useful. It's also worth noting that Android's
recently added support for game controllers and other similar input
devices could make Google TV hardware serve as a casual gaming console.
