2.3. Television Requirements

An Android Television device refers to an Android device implementation that is an entertainment interface for consuming digital media, movies, games, apps, and/or live TV for users sitting about ten feet away (a “lean back” or “10-foot user interface”).

Android device implementations are classified as a Television if they meet all the following criteria:

  • Have provided a mechanism to remotely control the rendered user interface on the display that might sit ten feet away from the user.
  • Have an embedded screen display with the diagonal length larger than 24 inches OR include a video output port, such as VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort or a wireless port for display.

The additional requirements in the rest of this section are specific to Android Television device implementations.

2.3.1. Hardware

To be added.

2.3.2. Multimedia

To be added.

2.3.3. Software

Android Television device implementations:

WebView compatibility (Section 3.4.1)

  • [T-0-1] Television devices MUST provide a complete implementation of the android.webkit.Webview API.

Lock Screen Media Control (Section 3.8.10)

If Android Television device implementations support a lock screen,they:

  • [T-1-1] MUST display the Lock screen Notifications including the Media Notification Template.

Multi-windows (Section 3.8.14)

  • [T-SR] Android Television device implementations are STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to support picture-in-picture (PIP) mode multi-window.

Accessibility (Section 3.10)

  • [T-SR] Android Television device implementations MUST support third-party accessibility services.

  • [T-SR] Android Television device implementations are STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to preload accessibility services on the device comparable with or exceeding functionality of the Switch Access and TalkBack (for languages supported by the preloaded Text-to-speech engine) accessibility services as provided in the talkback open source project.

Text-to-Speech (Section 3.11)

If device implementations report the feature android.hardware.audio.output, they:

  • [T-SR] STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to include a TTS engine supporting the languages available on the device.

  • [T-0-1] MUST support installation of third-party TTS engines.

TV Input Framework (Section 3.12)

To be added.