How to bring Android into the Internet digital home? Repost Article 1

We have the honor to have met arm's Home software architect through arm group ---Leon Zhang)(He is also a member of the arm strategic software alliance department. leon has many years of product development and project management experience and has participated in the development of digital recorders, set-top boxes, digital TVs, network TVs, Smart TVs (such as googletv) and other products. As a Home software architect, he focuses on the next generation of Internet Smart TVs and Digital Home software architecture. as a member of the strategic software alliance, he is committed to building a strong software ecosystem for partners in the arm family application market. Leon graduated from Tongji University. He works in Shanghai, China.) He reads his android TV series.Article, Which makes me gain a lot. With his permission, I will repost his series of four articles, so that I will carefully read them in the future and provide you with relevant reading materials.

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As an excellent open-source software solution, Android has already moved its scope from the mobile phone market to the tablet computer, and even the digital home field where digital TVs and set-top boxes are typical applications. Android was originally tailored for mobile devices. It supports resolution, color depth, multimedia playback architecture, and user interaction by default, the performance of 2D and 3D graphics cannot adapt to home applications such as digital TVs and set-top boxes.
ThereforeTo port android to a digital TV or set-top box, you need to perform a lot of customization and modification on Android. These modifications and customization involve all aspects of the Android software architecture. I will use four blogs to describe how to port the standard android to a digital TV or set-top box platform.

Before starting our discussion, let's briefly discuss the current situation and future of digital TV and set-top box software.

• Digital TV/Current Situation of set-top box Software

1. Software Architecture Differentiation

Currently, different operating systems, different middleware platforms, and unnecessary applications are used in the software architecture of digital TVs and set-top boxes.ProgramThe framework greatly differentiates the software architecture.
At the operating system levelDifferent operating systems, such as Linux, UCOS, VxWorks, WinCE, Itron, and threadx, are deployed on different products;
At the middleware layer, there are open and standardized middleware platforms, such as MHP, tru2way, ACAP, Arib, and mheg5, as well as private and non-standard middleware platforms; different middleware software providers provide different middleware solutions, which are mostly incompatible with each other.
In the Application ecosystem, the lack of a unified application software framework leads to a lack of a common application ecosystem.

2. Network Interconnection of devices

Networking has become the trend and direction of Digital Home, or, more specifically, digital TV and set-top box development. From figure 1, we can see thatIn 2013, more than 50% of TVs will be connected to the Internet.
Figure 1 development trend of global Internet TV
From Figure 2, We can better clearly see the obvious growth trend of Internet TV in China

Figure 2 Development Trend of Internet TV in China
HoweverDespite the obvious trend of digital TV interconnection, there is still a lack of unified middleware standards to cope with this trend.

• So what will the software architecture of digital TV look like in the future?

The current situation already contains requirements for the future architecture.

Although Digital TV software has obvious differencesLinux has become the most common software platform, which leads to the use of a large number of open-source software, making the digital TV software a unified basis;

In addition, the trend of network interconnection requires that digital TV platforms in the future be standardized, highly compatible, and high-performance platforms. Therefore, the future digital TV software architecture should have at least the following characteristics:

• More open
• More unified
• Higher Performance
• More interconnected

Figure 3 shows a virtual future digital TV or set-top box software architecture.

To clearly see some trends and key attributes:

Figure 3 Future digital TV and set-top box Software Architecture

 

• More open-source or standardized Middleware
• More common application framework
• Focus more on passUI and application layer changes to achieve Differentiation

Figure 3 is just a virtual architecture, not a hard standard for the future digital TV and set-top box software architecture. However, I believe that the future Digital Home software architecture will more or less converge on this architecture. WhileBecause of its own characteristics, Android has become a strong competitor in the future Digital Home software architecture.

The series of links: http://blogs.arm.com/software-enablement/465-%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E5%B0%86android%E5%B8%A6%E5%85%A5%E4%BA%92%E8%81%94%E7%BD%91%E6%95%B0%E5%AD%97%E5% AE %B6%E5%BA%AD-%E7%AC%AC%E4%B8%80%E7%AF%87/