Google Gives Android TV Developers Instant Apps, Speech-to-Text, and Predictive Typing

An anonymous reader shares a report: Even before the pandemic, the battle to own your living room was reaching a boiling point. Now the big screen is bigger than ever as 2020 accelerates the streaming wars and raises the smart TV platform stakes. Naturally, Google is making every effort to avoid being left behind. Today the company gave Android TV developers new tools, including Google Play Instant, the Play Store in the emulator, PIN code purchases, Gboard TV, auto low latency mode, and leanback library improvements. [...] Google says Android TV now works with seven of the top 10 smart TV OEMs and over 160 TV operators. The company also added that there are now "over 80% more Android TV monthly active devices than a year ago," but didn't divulge raw numbers. Developers have built about 7,000 apps for Google Play on Android TV, to date, up from 5,000 in April 2019.

Predictive text/auto-correct

[DulcetTone]

Note to platform text innovation team: "if" and "of" are both words, as are "well" and "we'll", "its" and "it's", etc. You should never change one into the other unless you are doing sentence-level analysis to back up your zealous mission.

Great

[b0bby]

How about they give us Google Photos? I have had an Android TV box for a few years now, and AFAIK I still can't get an official Google Photos app to let me use my TV as a photo screen. Well, I can, but I have to cast it from my phone which seems bass-ackwards when I have a Google device, logged into my account, connected via HDMI.

Coffee-flavored coffee, beer-flavored beer..

[Rick Schumann]

..and TV sets that are just TV sets.
That's the way it should be.
If I need to use a full-on computer with a TV-sized screen, I'll plug the computer into the TV. I don't need the TV to be a full-on computer.
Especially when it's probably being used to spy on me in my house.
Fuck you, Google.

Re: Coffee-flavored coffee, beer-flavored beer..

[Malays2 bowman]

I would like this if

- There are no forced updates
- There are no long lags and boots when I just want to watch broadcast TV or use the inputs
- There is an emergency restore partition with a full copy of the OS/tools as it was shipped from the factory
- No spy cams or mics that cannot be disabled with a physical switch
- no need at all to connect it to the internet ever, just to use it as a regular TV/monitor.
- all "telemetry" must be fully disableable by the owner

Ideally, the TV should be 'dumb', and the 'smar

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

Yup.

Re:

[hattig]

I have a Sony Android TV.

I assure you, you would have wanted the major UI force updated, the prior version of the UI was a mess. It's still rather poor, but better than it was.
It can boot fairly instantly to watch broadcast TV, although who does that these days? The TV spends most of its time in Netflix, Prime Video, iPlayer or YouTube.
The remote has a microphone, there's no camera anywhere. I don't know if it supports external cameras - could be a neat Zoom setup, if Zoom is available on Android TV. But ye

Don't do it..it's a trap

[TuballoyThunder]

Who wants to bet that it will also include even more efficient means to gather information and display targeted advertising.