(upbeat music)
Hi, everyone.
I’m Shalini, VP and GM of TV platforms at Google.
Thank you for tuning in to our session that covers Android TV OS,
our underlying operating system for TV.
In the past year, we’ve all had to change our routines.
With more time spent at home,
the largest screen in our homes also became the most important.
In 2020, usage of smart TVs
increased by 157%,
as we tuned into the news,
binge watched series like The Queen’s Gambit,
or watched the world premiere of blockbusters like Mulan.
And not only has TV usage increased,
but the breadth of content that is being accessed is larger than ever.
Today, the average US household
subscribes to four streaming services.
With both growing demand
and an immense amount of content choice,
we’re truly in the golden age of entertainment.
On Android TV OS,
we have partnered with over 250 TV manufacturers
and cable operators to meet this demand.
And thanks to content providers and developers like you,
there are now more than 8000 apps available for Android TV OS.
Together, we’re transforming living rooms all around the world
into movie theaters, classrooms, personal gyms, and more.
Today, we are excited to announce a new milestone.
80 million monthly active devices powered by Android TV OS.
In the US, we're seeing exciting growth
of over 80% year-over-year.
This is not possible without your partnership.
So a heartfelt thank you to all of you.
Android TV OS is the operating system that powers a number of experiences.
Last fall, we introduced a brand new experience
called Google TV.
Google TV was inspired by feedback
that we heard time and time again from our users.
In this golden age of entertainment,
there is so much good content to choose from,
it can actually become difficult to decide what to watch next.
That's where Google TV comes in.
Google TV brings together content from across your apps,
and organizes it all based on what you like to watch
and what interests you,
helping you discover more content that you will love.
We’re excited by the overwhelmingly positive reception for Google TV.
We’re looking forward to working with all of you
to bring even more engaging, and rich experiences and content to TV.
I’ll now hand it over to our director of product, Ben Serridge,
to demonstrate how one developer
has created a unique experience on Android TV,
along with several new product announcements and developer tools.
Thank you Shalini.
This is such an exciting time for Android TV OS.
With so much momentum,
it’s great to see partners and developers pushing the envelope
to create new and innovative experiences on the platform.
One shining example is the Red Bull TV app.
Red Bull launched the world’s first synced AR experience
for on-demand video streaming exclusively on Android TV OS.
Synced with The Last Ascent,
a documentary that follows Will Gadd’s eye opening journey up Mount Kilimanjaro,
this experience gives viewers an immersive and engaging way
to participate in the journey
through interactive 3D content, additional videos and more.
Our goal is to enable you to be innovative, creative, and effective
by launching helpful products and tools that make developing for Android TV easier,
whether you’re developing completely new capabilities like Red Bull TV,
or integrating into our existing features.
A great example of a highly effective feature is the WatchNext API.
With the launch of Google TV, we continued to leverage the WatchNext API
through the Continue Watching row,
allowing users to quickly jump back into content.
The WatchNext API is utilized by well over 100 major partners today,
including many of our top global media partners
who are seeing its effectiveness first-hand.
As you know, it’s a common challenge to get users to continue to engage with content
that they previously started.
The WatchNext API gets this content featured front and center for the user,
helping to reduce churn and increase engagement.
In fact, in recent research,
we saw that the WatchNext API could increase re-engagement
by upwards of 30% in certain cases.
Two new features that will help you build more engaging user experiences for your apps
are Cast Connect Stream Transfer and Stream Expansion.
As you know, with Cast Connect,
users can cast directly to the Android TV native app,
which they can then navigate using the Android TV remote,
improving the user experience compared to standard cast.
However, we also know that users like to watch content across many screens.
Whether it’s multiple TVs spread across the home in different rooms,
or an array of tablets, smart displays and mobile devices,
users want the ability to transfer the content that they’re casting
from one device to another.
With Cast Connect Stream Transfer users can do just that.
Once a Cast Connect session is started,
the user can switch the casted content to another device
simply by using their voice.
And with Cast Connect Stream Expansion,
users can add speakers to what is playing on the current stream.
Let's take a look at a demo.
Let's start with the cast feature that we all know and love.
You start watching something on your phone and then cast it to your TV.
However, what if you need to move to another room?
Now, with Stream Transfer,
you can simply press the Google Assistant button and say,
“Move this to the bedroom display,” and what you’re watching will pop up
on your cast connected device in the other room just like that.
When users initiate Stream Transfer on the source device,
Cast SDK has a smart default implementation
to automatically generate a media load request
from your media session, so no code change is required.
But you can always customize the load request in onStoreSession
by setting CustomData.
On the destination device,
you should add a Resume_Session intent in your Android manifest
to indicate that your app supports stream transfer.
Then you should implement onResumeSession to extract the load request,
start playback with your player, update MediaManager,
and broadcastMediaStatus.
In addition to these new capabilities,
we're also happy to announce several improved testing tools
to help you test and validate your apps.
First up, the emulator.
Last year, we announced our first emulator with the Play Store.
We are excited to announce the addition of two new emulators for Android 11,
one with the traditional Android TV UI and one with the Google TV UI.
Now you can start testing your app on Google TV
without requiring any new hardware.
In addition, we have introduced a new emulator remote control
based on the Android TV reference remote spec.
For example, this remote can help you test
how your app interacts with Google Assistant much more efficiently.
Let's take a look at a demo.
Here’s the emulator that you’re very familiar with for Android TV.
In the past, you had to rely on this control bar
to access commands such as back, overview, and home.
Now, with the full remote control that closely follows our reference remote,
you can intuitively interact with all the key remote buttons.
You can even access Google Assistant directly from this interface
and see the response on screen.
For instance, let’s check on the weather in Hawaii.
As you can see, the response is accurate
to what you would see in the actual product experience.
Next, we are happy to announce Firebase Test Lab for Android TV OS.
Firebase Test Lab is a leading service
with millions of weekly tests being run by developers
to evaluate their app performance on different devices.
Firebase Test Lab now includes Android TV devices
that allow you to test your apps on a scalable cloud solution
without requiring the setup of your own physical test lab.
Virtual devices use the Android TV emulator,
but let you run tests at scale with cloud-based virtual machines.
For example, you could play thousands of episodes on your app in a single day
by testing with Firebase Test Lab.
Physical devices running Android TV OS
will be available soon in addition to our virtual devices,
giving you even more options and flexibility in your testing.
Okay, so let’s see how it looks like in real life.
Here we have a terminal screen open,
and as you can see, we’re running Firebase Test Lab through G-Cloud.
We’re running a test called Robo
that automatically traverses the UI, without requiring us to record a script.
As you can see, the test is deploying and then getting executed.
It’s worth mentioning that in addition to the pass/fail result,
we also provide a summary video.
The summary video is made up of screenshots taken at regular intervals
and stitched together to give you visibility
into what Firebase Test Lab experienced during the test.
Firebase Test Lab virtual devices are available in beta
and we encourage you to try them out and provide us with feedback.
Lastly, Android 12 Beta 1 on ADT-3 is launching today.
We encourage you to try it and provide us with feedback.
Aligning the Android TV release with the overall Android mobile release
was part of a concerted effort to leverage the power of the Android ecosystem
and allow for increased efficiency and innovation on TV.
We’re happy with the results of this undertaking,
and we hope that this will be a significant advantage for the developer community.
The future of TV is bright, and Android TV OS will continue to push
to be at the forefront of what TV can offer.
Thank you for continued support of the platform.
Click on over to the Android TV sandbox to see a demo of our reference app,
learn more about how to get your app ready for Google TV,
and see another example of app innovation on Android TV.
We’re looking forward to seeing what you can build.
(upbeat music)