YouTube Tv Player

A YouTube player for Android TV

Get it

You can easily add this library to your app through JitPack.

build.gradle:

allprojects {
    repositories {
        jcenter()
        maven { url "https://jitpack.io" }
    }
}

app/build.gradle:

dependencies {
    compile 'com.github.itvlab:youtube-tv-player:0.2.1'
}

How does this work?

Since the standard Android YouTube SDK doesn't work for video playback, this uses a WebView and loads the YouTube URLs using their embedded URL. Then, playback is controlled through JavaScript.

Tv Input Framework / Live Channels

This project includes the TIF Companion Library and automatically implements the TvPlayer interface, so it's easy to include this in your Live Channel app.

How to use in my project

The YouTubePlayerView is an extension of the AbstractWebPlayer and is both a media player (implementing TvPlayer) and a view. You can instantiate it, load a YouTube video id, and include an event handler to do things once I am done.

mPlayer = ((YouTubePlayerView) findViewById(R.id.player_youtube));
mPlayer.loadVideo("kjEmkdrdRtI");
mPlayer.registerCallback(new TvPlayer.Callback() {
    @Override
    public void onCompleted() {
        super.onCompleted();
        mPlayer.loadVideo("kjEmkdrdRtI");
    }
});

How can I use this for my Live Channels app?

You can create a YouTubePlayerView as the session's overlay view. Then, when you want to play a program, load the desired video and enable the overlay view. This will start playing your video without needing to handle a surface while giving you full access to playback controls.

DVR

If you want to add DVR functionality, you can simply save bookmarks to the desired video and play it later without having to download it and do disk management.

Can I use this for Vimeo or other players?

Sure! You can create a new class which extends AbstractWebPlayer and implement the necessary methods. Do a pull request with a different player and it'll be added to the library.

Example

You can check out SubChannel to see an example of this library in action.

Known Issues

• Missing some advanced YouTube features.
• Some videos won't play due to copyright restrictions. This isn't handled.