Best strategy to overlay data on a broadcast

[Kevin McDonagh]

Hello, what is currently the best technique to show overlaid visual
data on GoogleTv?
So far I have considered the the following:

The obvious Android route would be to create a FrameLayout with a
VideoView on the bottom and then overlay another layer above the
video. the problem is though doing this I'm unclear how to pipe the
byte stream from the current broadcast into the video view. Are there
any examples of engaging with broadcast data through GoogleTv
available?

The other horrible method would be to customise Toast notifications
with a nigh on full screen layout. Then silently spam the
notifications to keep the toasts alive over the video content.

Appreciate any feedback!

[Christian Kurzke]

- May developers right now go the "Toasts" notification route.  Keep in mind you can use a custom layout inside Toast Views.

(and no, we dont recommend to "spam" the toast system.)

- Check out "Alert Dialogs" for usecases where you need a dialog format

- lastly.... ..... some apps use transparent activities over the video player.

This results typically in poor user experience (keys are not passed to the TV player, users are confused because they cannot change channels etc.)

It also takes up a lot of performance, since Android is really not that good with multiple full screen alpha layers. very CPU/GPU intensive.

Reg. your video view idea...... stay tuned.... we're working on an "official" API for that.

-

Christian G. Kurzke  |  Developer Advocate  |  Android / Google TV

[Kevin McDonagh]

For illustration and proof of concept I'll try a Toast style approach
until there is an alternative.

Regards, Kevin

[Raghuram B]

Just a clarification

In this app SocialEyez
video-http://www.youtube.com/watch?
feature=player_embedded&v=VZg4Lf3hByk

Which approach is used to get livetv as well as app content on the
screen?