webOS TV 6.0: What's New?
LG published their webOS TV 6.0 developer documentation to their developer website at https://webostv.developer.lge.com/. The LG webOS TV 6.0 is their 2021 model. The blog announcement is located at https://webos.developer.lge.com/webos-news-list/webos-tv-sdk-6-0-0-release/.
LG first announced this 2021 edition on the 7th of January 2021 at https://lg.com/us/press-release/lgs-webos-6-0-smart-tv-platform-designed-for-how-viewers-consume-content-today.
The home screen got a big redesign, and the TV comes with a "Magic Remote" with voice recognition.
An OLED TV branded the "LG SIGNATURE OLED R 65'' Class Rollable 4K Smart TV w/ AI ThinQ® (64.5'' Diag)" is the most expensive 6.0 model priced at $99,999.99. A 4K TV branded the "LG 49 inch Class 4K Smart UHD TV (48.5'' Diag)" is the cheapest 6.0 model priced at $379.99.
So what's new for webOS app developers? In a nutshell: not much, but keep reading below.👇
Chromium 79
webOS TV applications use Chromium (i.e. Chrome) as their development framework. This means that web app developers use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to develop webOS TV applications, as well as the "native" Chromium APIs.
webOS TV 6.0 uses Chromium 79. The 2020 model (5.0) was using Chromium 68.
There are no major updates hidden in these patches, which is similar to what we wrote in our Tizen 6.0 article. Things. Regardless – feel free to skim through Chrome's "New in Chrome" articles listed below.
| Version | Release Date |
|---|---|
| 79 | December 10, 2019 |
| 78 | October 22, 2019 |
| 77 | September 16, 2019 |
| 76 | July 30, 2019 |
| 75 | June 4, 2019 |
| 74 | April 24, 2019 |
| 73 | March 12, 2019 |
| 72 | January 29, 2019 |
| 71 | December 4, 2018 |
| 70 | October 18, 2018 |
| 69 | September 4, 2018 |
The new user agent is:
Mozilla/5.0 (Web0S; Linux/SmartTV) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.79 Safari/537.36 WebAppManagerwebOS TV SDK 6
The release notes for the webOS TV SDK 6.0.0 were published to https://webostv.developer.lge.com/sdk/installation/release-notes/ in May 2021.
MSE and EME specification
Media Source Extensions (MSE) and Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) are the browser APIs that web developers use to implement video and DRM playback.
webOS 6 uses the MSE W3C Recommendation 17 November 2016 and EME W3C Recommendation 18 September 2017, which is also what webOS 5 was using. These are the latest "stable" specifications, but there are more recent "editor drafts".
Audio and Video formats
The AV formats for webOS 6.0 TV are documented at https://webostv.developer.lge.com/discover/specifications/supported-media-formats/webos-60/.
There are no changes compared to 5.0, except for some notes on the "8K Ultra HD" model. The 6.0 "8K Ultra HD" model seems less "advanced". It's missing support for VP9, and AV1 is limited to 40Mbps instead of 50Mbps. (However: there are also some models that do support VP9 for the 6.0 model, similar to how the 5.0 model has some models that lack VP9 support.)
Design
There are new resources related to the design at https://webostv.developer.lge.com/design/webos-tv-system-ui/home/ and https://webostv.developer.lge.com/design/style/icon/.