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Google recently confirmed Android 10 is now officially coming to Android TV.
At the time, Google did not provide specifics on what changes Android 10 will bring to its TV platform.
Since the initial announcement, one Android TV company has detailed some of what device owners can expect.
Android TV finally getting the 10 upgrade
It may have taken its time, but Android TV is finally going to get its upgrade to Android 10. Right now, it still remains unclear when the upgrade will become available as it is currently only being seeded out to device-makers. Therefore, the actual delivery date for any brand or device will depend on the third-party companies involved.
Technically, SDMC is one of those companies. This might not be a company as readily known as NVIDIA, Sony or Xiaomi, however, SDMC is an Android TV device maker. The company typically makes white label solutions that other companies can then use for a quicker and cheaper route to market.
Following Google’s announcement, SDMC posted on reddit detailing a number of what it considers to be the most important changes.
The “top six” Android 10 changes
According to SDMC, there are six main changes that users might want to be aware of. These are summed up as “Security,” “Media & Graphics,” “Dynamic Partitions,” “Energy Consumption,” “Privacy,” and “Performance & Update-ability.”
The company breaks these down even further by pointing to an improvement in “memory management” as an important Android TV improvement. Essentially, this is the ability for Android TV users to do more at the same, thanks to the OS’s ability to recall more at the same time. Technically, this even applies to when the device is asleep thanks to the power saving improvements Android 10 is also bringing.
There will of course be various security and privacy improvements. On this, SDMC not only points to general storage encryption improvements, but specifically the improvement to the efficiency of storage encryption in the first place.
What is possibly the most useful feature that users will see in action is the support for AV1. While this yet another video codec, it is one expected to make quite the splash in the future. In many ways, AV1 is seen as the natural replacement for VP9.
AV1 is an open source video codec from the the Alliance for Open Media – a group Google is an integral part of. While support for AV1 is still in the early stages, it is a part of Android 10 and the general consensus is it will result in greater compression without compromising on video quality. In other words, AV1 is designed to offer high quality video while using less bandwidth.
Needless to say, that’s something which will specifically benefit a video-centric platform, such as Android TV.