[Youtube Video] Samsung Smart TV Development Tutorial 04: Installing the Samsung Smart TV SDK 4.5
Samsung released version 4.5 of its Smart TV SDK with a significantly different installation approach compared to earlier versions. This tutorial walks you through the complete step-by-step installation process on a Windows machine.
Three Components You Need to Install
Setting up the Samsung Smart TV SDK 4.5 environment requires three separate software components:
- Samsung Smart TV IDE — the integrated development environment for writing and managing your TV apps
- VirtualBox — a free virtualization environment available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris
- SDK Emulator Machine Image — a VirtualBox machine image in OVF (Open Virtualization Format) that runs the Smart TV emulator
What Changed in SDK 4.5 vs Previous Versions
A notable difference in SDK 4.5 is how the IDE is packaged. Unlike previous versions that bundled the IDE and emulator together in an installer file, the 4.5 IDE comes as a ready-to-run Eclipse-based environment — no installation procedure needed. You simply extract the contents and run eclipse.exe directly. The emulator, however, is now delivered as a standalone VirtualBox machine image rather than being bundled with the IDE.
Installing VirtualBox and Importing the Emulator Image
After downloading VirtualBox, installation is straightforward — just run the installer and it handles everything. Once VirtualBox is installed, the next step is importing the emulator machine image. Go to File > Import Appliance in VirtualBox and navigate to the .ovf file you downloaded. The OVF (Open Virtualization Format) is a widely supported format that works across multiple virtualization environments including KVM, QEMU, and VirtualBox.
During import, review the machine settings — particularly the CPU allocation, which should be set to a number less than or equal to the physical CPU cores on your machine.
Configuring a Shared Folder for IDE–Emulator Communication
A critical step that is easy to miss: you must create a shared folder so the IDE can communicate with the emulator machine image. Create a folder on your system (for example, D:\share\apps), then configure it in VirtualBox by going to the emulator VM’s Settings > Shared Folders. Add the folder path and make sure to check the Auto Mount option — without this, the IDE will have trouble launching the emulator automatically when you run a project.
Creating and Running a Test Project
To verify the installation, launch the Samsung Smart TV IDE and make sure the Samsung Smart TV SDK perspective is selected. Create a new project via File > New Project, select Samsung Smart TV Web Apps > Samsung Smart TV JavaScript Project, give it a name, and click Finish. Add a simple heading element to the index.html file and apply a style in main.css. Then right-click your project in the Project Explorer and choose Samsung Smart TV SDK > Run Project in Samsung Smart TV Emulator to verify your output appears correctly.
Works on Other Operating Systems Too
While the tutorial demonstrates installation on a Windows 64-bit machine, the same procedure applies to other operating systems. Simply download the corresponding IDE and emulator files for your platform (Mac OS X, Linux, etc.) and follow the same steps.
Watch the full video tutorial to follow along with each installation step and get your Samsung Smart TV SDK 4.5 development environment running smoothly.