To say Google’s first attempt at an Android-powered television OS was a monumental failure would be putting it lightly. Thankfully, they went back to the drawing board and are took another stab at it with their all new vision for the platform: Android TV.
Only commercially available on the Nexus Player at the moment, Google is now making available the Android TV Launcher in the Google Play Store. While you wont be able to install it on just any Android device (not even a Google TV-powered television), the app exists on Google Play as a quick and easy way for Google to update the app without the need for a full system update, addressing bugs and/or add new features as they come.
Anyone with a compatible device — ADT-1 or Nexus Player owners — will find the app already installed on their devices, so really there’s not much to see here until an update is available. Our question is whether or not this apk can be sideloaded onto other devices (like a dusty old tablet), allowing them to act as Android TV devices?
Great. Maybe soon we can change things like background pics
Google should allow google TVs to use this. Otherwise they really screwed over early adopters. Also I returned my nexus player. Fire TV just does it better but I really want to see android TV do well
GTV devices should all die. They were an abomination of android, and completely differed from other devices (phones/tablest) running the same android versions. It wasn’t until jellybean that google tried to make android the same across all devices.. but probably less than 1% of GTV devices got an update to jellybean (OEMs responsibility).
Android TV, starting with lollipop, is what the jellybean update was supposed to be about… plus a bunch of new and useful features. They aren’t going to be wasting time supporting GTV devices that are EOL.
I agree with and and also think that it is too pity that it works only with some devices, i think they are mistaken with this decision.
My child use Handy Smart TV Launcher (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.handysmart.android.launcher&hl=en)with its’ remote control app for my tv box and i ‘m pretty satisfied with all functions, design. Morover it works with a lot of mobile devices and tv-boxes and have intuitive remote control app.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/handy-smart-tv-launcher-remote-control-t2975916