Opera TV Emulator: Getting started

Installation and launch

The Opera TV Emulator is provided as a Linux virtual machine for VirtualBox. This ensures a test environment for web developers that is as close to a real device system as possible. The VirtualBox virtualization environment is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Installation

  1. Download and install the most recent VirtualBox package for your OS version from the VirtualBox website. For help with the installation, see the VirtualBox user manual
  2. Extract the TV Emulator VirtualBox image package to any folder you prefer to use as a virtual images store.
  3. Double-click on the Opera TV Emulator.vbox file - the virtual machine should be automatically installed in VirtualBox and appear in the launcher.

You can also install the image manually from within VirtualBox: from the Machine menu, choose Add and open the Opera TV Emulator.vbox file.

Launch

There are two ways to launch the TV Emulator; you can double-click the Opera TV Emulator.vbox file directly, or select the Opera TV Emulator machine from the VirtualBox launch window.

Adding the H.264 codecs

Because of licensing restrictions, the H.264 codecs usually found on connected TVs and devices are not installed in the Opera TV Emulator by default.

When starting the emulator for the first time, you should see an option on the start screen to install the H.264 codecs in the virtual machine. After a successful installation, the emulator will restart, and you will now be able to test and play native HTML5 audio and video in the Opera TV Emulator.

There are, however, reported cases where the automatic codec installation can fail. In these cases, there is an alternative manual process to get the codecs installed:

  1. Create a shared directory with the name plugins. See the section on shared folders for more information.
  2. Download the gstreamer0.10-x264 package and the libx264 package for i386 platform to your computer (i.e. from the host operating system, not from within the Opera TV emulator itself).
  3. Unpack both packages (on Windows, you can use an application such as 7zip).
  4. From both packages, copy all files from the /usr/lib subdirectory to the plugins directory you created in step 1.
  5. Launch the Opera TV Emulator – the codecs should now be automatically recognised.

Shared folders to test local pages

Beyond being able to test "live" pages, you can also use the Opera TV Emulator to test pages stored on your local computer. To do that, you should share your working folder with the Opera TV Emulator system:

  1. Open the VirtualBox application
  2. Right-click on Opera TV Emulator and select Settings...
  3. From list on the left, choose Shared Folders
  4. Click + and add the folder with your project files (select "Auto-mount" and "Make Permanent" checkboxes)
  5. Confirm your changes
  6. After the Opera TV Emulator has restarted, you can access your project files in the emulator via file://localhost/mydata/sf_foldername, where foldername is the name of the folder you set to be shared.

Using the Opera TV Emulator

With a keyboard and mouse

The Opera TV Emulator can be used as a standard, lightweight browser. Using the address bar, you can navigate through Web pages.

To hide or show the address bar, press F1.

To exit the TV Emulator, we recommend closing the virtual machine's window and choosing Send the shutdown signal; this option is usually selected by default.

It is not recommended to select Power off the machine, as this option will not allow the system to close in the correct way. This may be harmful for the TV Emulator's Linux system.

With the web-based remote control

Remote control button functions

Another, much more powerful way of controlling the TV Emulator is through a web remote control.

To do this, launch the Opera browser on your host machine and access http://localhost:5555

You should now see the remote control image. The buttons on the remote control will operate the Opera TV Emulator as described below (see the information on adjusting the remote control settings here):

With the Remote Control Widget

An alternative to the web remote control interface is the Remote Control Widget. The main advantage of the widget is that it behaves like a standard desktop application, running in its own separate window. The widget requires Opera for Desktop as a runtime environment. To install it, simply double-click the remote_control.wgt file in the TV Emulator package's Remote Control Widget folder.

The VirtualBox machine for the Opera TV Emulator is set up to communicate with its host environment via port 5555 for remote control access and debugging with Opera Dragonfly. Please ensure that this port is not blocked or in use by another application.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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