AndroidTV

Android TV is a version of the Android operating system designed for digital media players. It features a user interface designed around content discovery and voice search, surfacing content aggregated from various media apps and services.

AndroidTV vs AOSPTV

The difference between AndroidTV and AOSPTV is the same as Android vs AOSP.

AOSPTV is Open-Source which means that you can download the source, modify it according to your needs and compile it. However, It doesn’t give you access to any Google services like play-store etc.

AndroidTV is the locked down variant of AOSPTV, the source isn’t available and its only available through OEM consumer products. They do provide full access to Google services for a more complete experience.

AOSPTV on 96Boards Hikey and hikey960

Recently Google added minimal functionality to AOSP source which allowed us to setup AOSPTV builds.

This resulted in me sending a patch to enable AOSPTV builds for Hikey and hikey960, which have now been merged upstream.

Patch

Build AOSPTV

Just follow the official guide for building AOSP
And replace lunch hikey960-userdebug with lunch hikey960_tv-userdebug or lunch hikey-userdebug with lunch hikey_tv-userdebug

Pitfalls

WiFi connection UI doesn’t have a “next” button. To be able to connect we have to use third-party apps
hikey boots to UI with kernel 4.4 or less
- Just enter the following command before make export TARGET_KERNEL_USE=4.4