User:Th3userscene/Installing Google TV (2010) in an emulator

This is a guide on installing Google TV (2010) in the Android Emulator. It can also, with slight modification, be used to run other old Android SDK emulator images.

Note that this guide doesn't apply to the Android TV variant launched in 2020, which is also called "Google TV"; to emulate that version install the latest Android SDK from Google's site, then install a Google TV image and create an emulator using the command line tools.

To emulate GTV you need to install an older version of the Android SDK, because using the latest emulator results in this error message: 

emulator: ERROR: New emulator backend requires minimum kernel version 3.10+ (currently got lower)
Please make sure you've got updated system images and do not force the specific kernel image together with the engine version

This guide has been tested on VMware Workstation 15 Player, a Windows 10 host and Windows 8.1 guest.

Requirements[edit | edit source]

  • A VT-x capable Intel CPU (might work for AMD too).
  • Windows or macOS. If you don't use these OSes you can try to do this in a virtual machine. In that case enable nested virtualization for the VM:
    • For VirtualBox open a command prompt/terminal, go to the folder VBox is installed in and run vboxmanage modifyvm <VM name> --nested-hw-virt on.
    • For VMware edit the VM, and under Processors check "Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI".

Setup[edit | edit source]

If you have a HAXM version newer than 7.0 installed, you need to either uninstall it or do this in a VM (see the steps above).

Install HAXM version 7.0. (Newer versions will result in lines starting with emulator: Trying to vcpu execute at eip: being printed repeatedly.)

Then, install JDK 8. I used Eclipse Temurin/Adopt OpenJDK, but the proprietary Oracle JDK should work too.

Installing Android SDK[edit | edit source]

  1. Install Android SDK tools, version 24.4.1: Windows, macOS. The rest of the guide assumes that you're using Windows, though most instructions should apply to both OSes.
  2. Unpack the tools and open tools/android.bat.
  3. Under "Show:" tick "Obsolete".
  4. Untick the Android SDK tools and build tools. Optionally untick the Android SDK platform tools (they contain tools like adb and fastboot).
  5. Untick Android R and 10.
  6. Optionally untick Google USB Driver under Tools.
  7. Under Android 3.1, tick "Google TV Addon (Obsolete)". If there is no Google TV Addon make sure that "Obsolete" is ticked.
  8. Click "Install 2 packages" and accept all licenses. Note: you need to select both the Android Googletv and Android SDK licenses separately.
  9. When the SDKs are installed, close the SDK manager.

Creating and running a device[edit | edit source]

  1. Open a command prompt/terminal and go to the Android SDK tools folder.
  2. Type android list targets and note the ID for "Google Inc.:Google TV Addon:12".
  3. Type android create avd -n GoogleTV -t <ID>, where <ID> is the ID from the previous command.
  4. Disconnect your internet. (If it's connected you'll get an error message on first boot.)
  5. Type emulator @GoogleTV.
  6. Wait for the emulator to launch. You should see the Google TV setup wizard.
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