Cross platform user agent string

Cross platform user agent string

Postby Tillmann » Tue Nov 12, 2013 6:20 am

Some SmartTVs (e.g. of LG) offer two platforms in parallel: STA for Portal apps and HbbTV for broadcast-related apps. Both STA and HbbTV have defined their own user agent which can be requested by the app.
Question: Is the user agent the same for both platforms? If yes: How does it look like? And how can the app find out on which platform it is running?
Or are there two different user agent strings depending on which platform is used? (I.e. an STA app would get the one described in the STA specification, and an HbbTV app would get the one defined in the HbbTV specification.)
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Re: Cross platform user agent string

Postby Specs_STA » Tue Nov 12, 2013 6:20 am

Thanks for your question.

The Smart TV Alliance (\"STA\") specification defines a specific extension to the user agent for platforms that support STA version 2.5 onwards. This user agent extension is \"SmartTVA/2.5.0\" (or similar for later versions). When this extension to the user agent (\"UA\") string is present, you can assume the platform to run an STA compatible browser. Specific instructions for determining this STA UA extensions string are given in the Smart TV Alliance SDK examples and guidelines section, \"https://developers.smarttv-alliance.org/sdk-documentation\". There is no direct relationship between the STA UA extension string and other standards' user agent string extensions such as HbbTV: the manufacturer of the platform determines when a specific user agent string extension is shown to the app, and essentially also whether an app based on a standard such as STA can run \"alongside\" an app based on a different standard.

We hope this helps.

STA Specs
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Re: Cross platform user agent string

Postby mautilus » Tue Nov 12, 2013 6:20 am

Hi Tillman,

User-Agent strings are different (which is logical as those are different platforms), but all User-Agent string I have seen in HbbTV world always includes the word HbbTV followed by the version, e.g. HbbTV/1.1.1.

BR
STeN
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