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GETTING STARTED WITH AIR FOR TV
Introducing Adobe AIR 2.5 for TV
Last updated 12/7/2010
The static, minimalist user interfaces that are the current standard for most home-entertainment devices and
programming sources are limited compared to the dynamic, feature-rich user experiences that AIR for TV
supports. AIR for TV uses a platform’s graphical hardware accelerators to provide a high-performance graphical
user interface for a 10-foot user experience. Such user interfaces are designed for a large television screen with user
input from a remote control device.
AIR for TV platform development
AIR for TV requires minimal effort to recompile on any Linux distribution that is based on version 2.6.x of the Linux
kernel. AIR for TV can be recompiled for most target platforms in a single working day. This effort does not require
extensive porting of C++ code or knowledge of AIR.
AIR for TV provides a streamlined C++ Application Programming Interface (API) that does not require knowledge
of AIR details. You can develop and build an AIR for TV platform for a target Linux operating system entirely in a
Linux environment. You can also use the C++ debugging tools in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional on a
Win32 environment to assist your development efforts.
The highly modular design of AIR for TV facilitates the replacement of any module with a minimum of effort. To use
hardware capabilities that are unique to your target platform, you replace a module provided by AIR for TV with one
that you create. For example, AIR for TV provides a module that processes On2 streaming video in software. You can
replace this module with one you provide that accesses your platform’s hardware accelerators for processing streaming
video.
Note: Sometimes replacing a provided module with a platform-specific module is a requirement to support certain
features.
AIR for TV capabilities
AIR for TV is AIR 2.5, optimized for hardware and software architectures of digital home electronics. AIR applications
that run on AIR for TV use the AIR application profile
TV or extendedTV.
AIR for TV also provides the following overall capabilities:
• AIR application content appears in an area of the screen known as the Stage.
• AIR for TV can run AIR applications installed on the local file system. The root SWF file (the starting SWF file) can
load additional SWF content from file://URLs or from http://URLs. You can also enable AIR for TV to allow SWF
content to load additional SWF files from https://URLs.
Note: AIR for TV supports only SWF content in AIR applications. The applications cannot contain HTML, JavaScript,
CSS, Ajax, or PDF content.
• You can create your own platform-specific driver that enables your AIR for TV platform to interact with hardware-
based functionality of your target platform. Typically, you create drivers to replace functionality that AIR for TV
provides in software with a hardware-based equivalent. For example, to use hardware accelerators for
decompressing and presenting video, you create a driver. The driver enables your AIR for TV platform to interact
with specific video-processing hardware. Support of some features, such as H.264 support and digital rights
management, require a platform-specific driver.
• AIR for TV supports H.264 by interacting with a platform-specific driver that uses the device hardware’s H.264
support. Typically, the device provides full 1080p HD video.