How is COVESA Simplifying In-Car Entertainment for Content Providers and Carmakers?

Pioneering Open Standards for In-Car Entertainment

The Entertainment Workstream of the Automotive AOSP App Framework Standardization Group intends to redefine the automotive entertainment landscape by reducing access barriers for video, audio, music, and gaming providers on a custom Android Automotive OS. The group strives to simplify integration for third-party content providers by focusing on standardizing technical implementation across vehicles and brands. Following a first-ever in-car entertainment workshop at IBC 2024 in Amsterdam, COVESA aspires to create a collaborative environment that connects carmakers and content partners.

Background and Why?

Automotive is poised to become a vital content distribution platform, mirroring the evolution of Smart TVs. With 45-75% of car users emphasizing the importance of integrated entertainment systems, this sector requires innovations. Fragmented processes and diverse technical requirements across brands have posed significant challenges for content providers.

The Entertainment Workstream aims to address these barriers by:

• Researching and benchmarking entertainment industry standards.
• Identifying and collaborating to create shared, open, common components and processes to meet content partners’ requirements including topics like geolocation, DRM, accessibility, or playback quality.
• Reducing the complexity of implementing in-vehicle entertainment solutions across carmaker’s Automotive AOSP platforms.
• Endeavouring to enable enhanced user experience through common approaches to content discovery, connectivity, and personalization.

Activities to Date

The group’s activities include:

• Workshops and Initiatives: The IBC 2024 Amsterdam workshop laid the groundwork for upcoming interactive sessions between carmakers and content providers, highlighting the automotive sector’s potential as a content hub.
• Content Provider Collaboration: Engaging with global and local providers to align on common standards and practices for in-car entertainment.
• Geolocation: Identifying alternative APIs to enable geo-blocked content playback.

These efforts aim to unlock vehicle platforms and make in-car systems more attractive for content providers.

Get Involved!

Why Join?

• For Content Providers: Simplify access to in-car platforms and enhance user reach.
• For Carmakers: Deliver premium, standardized entertainment solutions.

How to Participate:

• Join Monthly Sessions: Engage in technical discussions and workshops to drive entertainment innovation.
• Collaborate: Help define cross-brand components to enable new use cases to explore and consume the content in the car
• Share Your Challenges: Share your knowledge and past experiences to craft solutions that tackle common challenges across vehicle brands

Relevant Links:

• Project Lead: Tomasz Dzikowski, 3SS
• Join Monthly Meeting: Thursday, 5:00-6:00 pm CET (11:00 am-12:00 pm ET) (Zoom Link)
• COVESA Slack Channel; #Entertainment
• COVESA Entertainment Workstream Wiki

Join the COVESA Entertainment Workstream to shape the future of in-car entertainment and connect with a global network of innovators!