The stampede to make Android TV compatible set-top boxes available for every kind of television platform provider

by danielcar

http://www.v-net.tv/2017/09/20/what-we-learned-at-ibc2017/

Google’s Android TV Operator Tier has been a game-changer, allowing TV companies to own the television user interface and have their service as the default view for customers. Amino have an interesting proposition – not just pure Android TV set-tops (like its ‘Amigo’) but hybrids (i.e. the Amino ‘Kamai’) that will support both Linux and Android as the OS that you can then build your television and user experience upon. That means an operator can start with their choice of middleware running on Linux, and then switch to Android if they want, running the same middleware. They displayed this capability on their stand, with Nordija middleware running on both Linux and Android, providing the same view of the operator TV service.

If you want a real indication of how the market is warming to Android TV then that was on the ARRIS stand, where their Android set-top boxes were given prominence. There are few companies that are more deeply embedded into the ‘traditional’ operator world and Android TV is now viewed as a big part of the future, together with RDK. ARRIS was promoting its Android STBs and its professional service capabilities for helping operators migrate to Android.

Aside of the set-top boxes themselves, a number of user experience/user interface (UX/UI) providers announced their Android ‘launchers’, which sounds like a new kind of product but amounts to the UX layer that sits on top of an Android OS using the Operator Tier version. Android is becoming another OS for these TV experiences to sit upon.

Andrroid

And here we see Googles plan unfolding: Android TV is set to do to TV's/IPTV boxes like Android did to mobile devices.

I know a lot of you are hoping that Google will push out another box some day, and maybe they will, but in my eyes, it's clear that the streaming STB market is not where they intend to push Android TV, at least for now.

Tired8281

Does this mean the Android TV Play Store is going to become even more restricted than it already is (less than 100 apps available to install, using the onscreen interface (many more if I use the web store, but who does that besides us?)), because of pressure from the cable providers? How long will they let Kodi (for example) be up there?

rahduke

Sadly this is probably irrelevant in the US, our shitty cable companies will never do anything that could be considered good for consumers.