Emulators
Testing on Emulators
If no TV is available the second best option is to use Smart TV Emulators. We suggest to use the Vewd TV (formerly Opera TV) Emulators.
Disclaimer: These emulators are not 100% compatible to the browsers on TV devices.
The most important differences:
- Performance: Emulators on a PC or Mac will have access to higher performing CPU/Memory which are not comparable to the TV hardware. Consider that the Smart TVs have a limited amount of memory (RAM) and CPU/GPU when developing applications.
- Media player: The support of streaming protocols, media codecs or DRM interfaces in the Emulators is not the same as on the TV hardware.
- Browser features: The current generation of Vewd TV Emulators is based on current Chrome/Blink engines and includes support for ECMAScript 6 and current generation PC/mobile browser. If your application is target to run on older TVs please consider testing on a device or older Emulators
Vewd TV Emulator: https://www.vewd.com/products-services/vewd-tv-emulator/
We suggest to use the Vewd TV Emulator (Standalone in Virtualbox VM) in combination with a Chrome based browser for remote debug sessions.
Instructions:
- Start the VM
- Accept TOS and install required packages
- Open localhost:5555 in a Chrome browser to allow remote URL input and DevTool debugging
Older Emulators Please use the following Emulators if older TV Generations using older browser engines are targeted. In general you should test on these outdated enviorments if advised for you development project or if you are debugging applicaitons that are already available on these platforms.
Opera TV Emulator 3.4 This older Emulator allows the testing the compatiblity of application for TV Generations 2016+. It is missing support for some streaming protocols and DRM interfaces but is based on the first Opera TV engine using Chromium/Blink. https://foxxum.box.com/s/o51jrveuef4jdr0efwaumignfq98yh5t
Opera TV Emulator 3.2-3.3 (deprecated) This emulator is based on the old Opera developed Presto Engine and only viable for debugging or testing for old Smart TV Platforms (2011-2013).