The Smart TV Alliance will launch a Common Developer Portal on May 1, 2014, that includes a Joint Application Developers Agreement and a Premium Developer Support Program. Currently, app developers need to negotiate a separate developer contract for each individual manufacturer in order to publish content. The Smart TV Alliance will overcome those inefficiencies with a single developer contract for publishing apps to all of the STA compliant devices.

"The new Common Developer Portal shows Smart TV Alliance apps are market ready for manufacturers, solution providers and consumers on a variety of televisions and devices," said Seijiro Yasuki, President of Smart TV Alliance and Chief Technology Executive of Digital Products & Services Company, Toshiba. "It encourages a vibrant smart TV ecosystem and removes the barriers to application development while enhancing the smart TV experience for consumers."

Premium Developer Support Program

The Smart TV Alliance announced its Developer Support Program at IFA 2013, which made the app qualification cycle more efficient by providing a joint manufacturer QA process. The Premium Developer Support Program will also provide developers the ability to publish their apps to various manufacturers' app stores after passing the Joint QA process in one integrated process.

SDK 3.0

The new software development kit provides app developers with emulation and app validation for Smart TV Alliance specification v3.0, including updated HTML5 and CSS features, the new device capability API and, based on developer feedback, optional features such as numeric keys, color keys and multi-audio. The SDK is backwards compatible and Smart TV Alliance specification v2.0 and v2.5 are selectable for application emulation and validation. Developers will find the SDK and additional developer resources, including the latest application development guidelines, on a newly updated developer portal (http://developers.smarttv-alliance.org) that offers step-by-step assistance for Smart TV Alliance app development.

Smart TVs in the Smart Home

The Smart TV Alliance is expanding its coverage to connect smart TVs to the smart home. It published a white paper today that outlines the Smart TV Alliance's smart home capabilities (http://developers.smarttv-alliance.org/specification).

A smart TV is one of the most intelligent and easy-to-use home appliances, giving it an important role in the smart home. The Smart TV Alliance Smart Home specification is based on open standards, including WebSocket, JSON, HTML5, and JavaScript, to ensure compatibility with the greatest number of smart home devices worldwide. With smart home features, applications running on a Smart TV Alliance platform can control and interact with connected devices at home to optimize the consumer's smart TV experience.

"The open standards-based Smart Home specification is a valuable tool that can extend the range of supported devices," said Simon Jeon, Head of Home Appliances and Air-Conditioning & Energy Solution R&D Center, LG Electronics. "As WebSocket and JSON are widely used in many areas, developers can easily use those technologies to make smart home-enabled applications."

New Member

Shenzhen TCL New Technology has joined the Smart TV Alliance. TCL is the No. 1 smart TV manufacturer in China and ranks No. 4 worldwide, significantly increasing the Smart TV Alliance's installed base.

Smart TV Alliance CES 2014 Event

The Smart TV Alliance will host "Smart TV Alliance 2014: Expanding the Smart TV Ecosystem" at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas today from 5 to 6:30 p.m. during CES International 2014.

The Smart TV Alliance event will include the Alliance's 2014 plans for the "Build Once, Run Everywhere" ecosystem and will demonstrate smart home and Smart TV Alliance compatible apps.

Contact the Smart TV Alliance at news@SmartTV-Alliance.org to request an invitation to the event.

About Smart TV Alliance

Founders LG Electronics, TP Vision and Toshiba established the Smart TV Alliance in 2012 to create attractive, platform-independent services for Smart TV applications. Smart TV Alliance's mission is to create a large and productive ecosystem for Smart TV application development that gives manufacturers a faster path to more and better TV applications, enables developers to write applications once for many different platforms, and provides consumers with a rich source of content and services. For more information about the Alliance, visit http://www.SmartTV-Alliance.org. For more information about the development environment, visit https://developers.smarttv-alliance.org.

Inventures for Smart TV Alliance
Alisa Pfeil, +1 775-720-5071
Public Relations
news@SmartTV-Alliance.org