Thankfully, the NVIDIA Shield TV is the best performing Android TV device, and an amazing streaming device. That’s because it has performance in spades. While setting up an emulator on the NVIDIA Shield (or any system) isn’t always easy, you get the benefit of being able to play games from several different consoles all on one system. Based on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, NoxPlayer is a free Android emulator that’s made with gaming in mind. Google Play is built in for easy access to games and other apps, and you get the whole Android experience, including the home screen, folders, the notification center, etc. The Smart TV Simulator enables any developers to test and debug their HTML5 apps for the TV App Store. It emulates Smart Core version 4.0 and later which powers millions of Smart TVs, Blu-ray.
The webOS TV emulator emulates webOS TV on your computer, enabling you to test and debug apps on your computer. It runs on the Oracle VM VirtualBox to emulate webOS TV and emulates LG Smart+ TV remote control unit.
This article provides below:
To learn about the main function of the webOS TV emulator, see Using webOS TV Emulator.
Installing Emulator
The webOS TV emulator is automatically installed on your computer when you install the full package installer of the webOS TV SDK.
Using the Component Manager of the webOS TV SDK, you can choose one or more versions of the webOS TV emulator to install. For more details about the installation of the emulator, see Installation.
Supported Platform Version
The supported platform version for each emulator is as below.
Emulator version | Supported webOS TV Version | Release Year of webOS TV |
|---|---|---|
6.0.0 | webOS TV 6.x | 2021 |
5.0.0 | webOS TV 5.x | 2020 |
4.0.0 | webOS TV 4.x | 2018, 2019 |
3.0.0 | webOS TV 3.x | 2016, 2017 |
2.0.0 | webOS TV 2.x | 2015 |
1.2.0 | webOS TV 1.x | 2014 |
Starting and Exiting Emulator
Starting the emulator activates the virtual machine and launches the main screen. Then, the remote control unit is launched.
Starting the emulator
Windows: Select the shortcut menu in Start > webOS TV SDK or click the shortcut icon on Desktop.
Mac OS: Select Finder > Favorites > Applications > webOS_TV_SDK and double-click the shortcut icon.
Linux: Search the emulator by keyword 'webOS' in Dash home and click the shortcut icon.
Exiting the emulator
Press in the remote control unit emulator or click MENU and select Exit.
When the confirmation popup window appears, click OK.
Getting Familiar with Emulator UI
The following screenshot shows the webOS TV emulator launched on the computer.
Item | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
① | Main Window | Displays emulator actions. It is in part of VirtualBox and has the same resolution as the LG Smart TV screen (1920 x 1080 Full HD). It can be resized or changed to full-screen mode. |
② | Remote Control Unit Emulator | Emulates the remote control unit. |
③ | Emulator Menu | Provides main functions. Click MENU, then sub-menus appear: App Manager, Take Screenshot, Help, About, and Exit. |
User Input & Preloaded Apps
The user inputs of the webOS TV emulator are similar to those of the webOS TV, using an HID keyboard, a mouse, and a remote control unit emulator.
Use a mouse to scroll up and down the page and navigate with the cursor.
Use an HID keyboard to enter text in an app.
The following keys are supported in the remote control unit emulator.
Power, Home, Back, OK, Left, Right, Volume, Mute
Press the Home key in remote control unit emulator for starting and exiting Home UI.
Press the Command key on macOS, the Windows key on Windows, and the Super key on Linux for starting and exiting Home UI.
This figure shows the Home UI containing preloaded apps in webOS TV emulator v6.0.0.
Welcome: An app showing the welcome message
Enact Hello: Enact-based web app that shows the 'HELLO WORLD!' message
Enact Sampler: A comprehensive tour of Enact and its libraries
APIs Supported on the Emulator
To see which APIs are supported on each emulator version, go to API and check each section.
Android Tv Emulator Download
Emulator Limitations and Differences
The following describes what limitations the webOS TV emulator has compared to webOS TV.
The webOS TV platform UI is limitedly supported: launching/exiting Home UI is supported only.
The TV tuner is not supported.
Magic remote control is limitedly supported. The acceleration sensor is not supported.
Supported codecs and containers are listed in Supported Media and DRM Formats.
LG Content Store is not supported.
Multi-sound works with multiple audio elements in the emulator. However, in real TV, you can only use one audio element in an app. See Playing Multi-sound for details.
Android Tv Emulator
This week Google has activated the SDK (Software Development Kit) for Android TV for developers. While you’ll likely be a developer wanting to activate this build, anyone can choose to take a peek at Android TV at their leisure, developer or not.
To take hold of this Android TV emulator, you’ll need several components. First you may want to follow the steps provided in our Download the Android L Developer Preview release now article. From there you’ll have most of what you need. Since that article was published, Google has pushed the Android TV files you’ll need to run the virtualized iteration of the company’s future in TV.
Above you’ll see the files you’ll need to download via your Android development software. For those of you wishing to see Android TV before you try it, and before you buy it, we also have an Android TV hands-on to share with you.
Above you’ll see an Android TV walkthrough. For the full shebang, have a peek at our Android TV hands-on at Google I/O 2014.
Android Tv Emulator Pc
There’s a piece of hardware out there in the wild called ADT-1 (which you’ll see above in our hands-on). This is the earliest Android TV hardware in existence, created by Google and given to some Google Developers at Google I/O in a dev session. While ideally you’ll be developing on hardware for a more finalized look at your Android TV app, this software solution should suffice until more Android TV hardware is unveiled for the market.