Big G On TV
Yesterday in a feat of great pomp and ceremony the mighty Google announced Google TV; their entrance into the consumer TV market. Jono Bacon and Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge take the announcement apart, assess what it means for the industry, what it means for Google, and whether Google TV will be more of a GMail (epic) or a Google Buzz (fail).
Of course, we are the very start of the conversation! What do you think? Do you think Google TV sounds like a compelling product? What does this mean for the cable providers? Do you think that Android can really cater to TV apps? Do you think that Google are overstretching themselves?
39 Comments to “Big G On TV”
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Now that my ipod classic hardrive has gone caput
it is easier to say I will soon just have a google
as it will be on everything but my macbook but unless I win the lottery I will have to get a cheap laptop and install chrome os on it as I need the internet mostly which is 30 euro a month along with 20 euro a month for my phone and a 400 euro phone.
Money money money – I hate and love tech and the same time.
Sure, Boxee is great, but Google is massive, they can strike the right kind of deals and pour money on the project until it just works.
On the other hand, one of the hard things with TV:s are that there is so many different standards over the world. This is a product for USofA, and will remain so for quite some time. The question is if that is the best market for this kind of product. Spotify, for instance, is great, but the concept works better i Europe. Broadband is faster and more common i Europe. And there are other aspects as well.
Well… just some random thoughts.
It was difficult to get a good impression of Google TV from the disaster of a demo in their I/O keynote.
I’m still a bit confused about what Google TV exactly is, but I definitely don’t think it’s the same as Boxee. It seems to let you browse the web on your TV (whilst watching TV), run Android apps and somehow interface with other set-top boxes and PVRs.
Boxee is a much more focussed product which frankly on first impressions has a much more understandable UI.
Having said that, just having the Google brand on it does make Google TV more likely to succeed and I see it more as an enabler of new awesome services for your TV than a killer app in its own right.
I think Boxee took the right attitude in their twitter post in response to the Google TV announcement – they see it more as a complimentary product. They suggested they might start building Boxee as an Android app to run on Google TV.
What I’m finding really confusing right now in the Google product range is Android vs. Chrome OS, Android apps vs. HTML5 web apps. Why does Android run on phones and TVs, where Chrome OS runs on netbooks and tablets?
So in conclusion – Google TV doesn’t particularly impress me on its own, but it could finally be the missing puzzle piece which brings new and interesting web services to your TV.
I get the impression that ChromeOS is much thinner: it is just enough OS to run a web browser to deliver apps, whereas Android is a full development platform.
Also Google loves the web a lot and want as much people on it as often as possible but
You can not get it everywhere anytime even at half decent speeds so they need a mobile os for phones and tablets.
But if you watch the keynote about HTML5 they’re pushing the fact that HTML5 apps can run offline and have as much access to hardware as current native apps.
Yes, Chrome OS is just enough to run an HTML5 browser but the suggestion seems to be that in the future that’s all you’ll need. I suppose to the purist in me it feels like Android is a stop-gap solution for Google until HTML5 is proven and ubiquitous. Are they really going to maintain their two separate OS projects (and now two separate app stores) forever?
Good point about Boxee being complimentary. Boxee gives you your media (movies, music, picture files). GoogleTV gives you web and television.
Made of win (well, if it works, and if it’s available in Australia – otherwise I don’t care).
I love boxee, I think it’s great purely because I can use my phone as a remote and watch everything I want on my PC. But my biggest problem with it, is that it’s aim isn’t to let me watch my own videos on my computer and then supplement that with online media, it wants me to watch the online media with the option of routing around my file directory to get at my videos.
And I kind of feel like Google might be going down the same route. And quite frankly if I like something enough to buy it and watch it, I’ll want to purchase it and burn it straight to a DVD for back-up and run it locally so it doesn’t cache – this is pretty much the opposite of Google’s dream cloud world.
Plus I don’t want to search the web on my tv, and I doubt I’ll want app’s, that’s what my phone is for. I think a little widget on the TV would be great and app’s for people who don’t own an android phone is great (To-Do list the family can add to and you get the updates on your phone).
At the end of the day, Google will keep pushing it, hardware manufacturers will getting paid for sticking it in, and we will all get used to using it whenever we want a quick search, but it doesn’t seem like a media center, it justs feel like a browser on a tv.
(Last point – Jono you mentioned before about un-plugging yourself from the desktop and your phone etc – well now there your tv telling you about e-mails and tweet’s :-S)
While I said I don’t think people want apps on their TV, I think I was a little quick to jump. There are some apps that people would find useful: a simple way way of getting the weather, reading news etc, these would all be appropriate for the big screen. Google TV could be a great way of delivering that kind of content.
The shame is, most of those things already exist — the Wii does them, for a start. Surely something innovative will come out of this?
The ps3 and possibly xbox 360 have a decent use of internet on your tv.
If they got a better browser and allowed people to update flash and install other things to improve the browser and allowed for the resolution to be changed to fix it to look better for certain sites it would be great.
Add a keyboard and mouse and it would nearly be as good as say a macbook or any laptop hooked up via hdmi but a lot easier for most.
I dont see why they dont just advertise use of chrome on a laptop hooked up to a tv with a wireless keyboard.
Best of absolutely everything then.
I think it more about android having a slick interface. The apps generally are scalable like the clock is scalable. I think it can make it on TVs if there is bigger buttons and a slightly different interface.
Google make lots of money from adverts so it makes sense that they would want Google in as many places as they can so they can put ads there. They are a public company they have to make money or stockholders get angry.
Google TV, iTunes and Ubuntu One Music Store all fail if you have to access them from a country that is classified as other or World store(non US or EU countries). The reason is the lack of content in these stores. They do not bring anything new to the party. Sort that out and you will have success.
As someone who’s spent 10+ years in cable tv engineering, I have a different view of what most people here are commenting on. It’s going to be lengthy…
To address “apps on tv”, it’s actually really useful, and the OpenCable alliance has set out to do this in an extremely open fashion with the EBIF standard. It’s all java based, and anyone can write an EBIF app. EBIF is an open standard, so EBIF apps work on anything that chooses to support the standard, regardless of provider and platform. Since the paradigm of developing these sort of apps really doesn’t exist, there will be an adoption curve, but apps will come.
I’d LOVE to have my calendar, the weather, and traffic displayed on a dashboard for 30 seconds every morning, but that’s SOOOO just the tip of the iceberg. How about watching my Columbus Crew with optional audio commentary, the supporter’s twitter stream, picture in picture of what’s going on in the stadium, or being able to turn all that crap plus the annoying scroll at the bottom telling me the Wolverhampton Wanderers barely avoided relegation again.
One thing that I haven’t seen in the discussion regarding “apps on tv” that google is talking about, Samsung has been doing, and people are hyped about is that this stuff has existed for 20+ years! Wink TV (now defunct, can’t even find reference data) used to provide a platform for embedding data in the VBI of video for doing exactly what this stuff is about. It’s defunct, as I mentioned, why though? Can’t say, don’t know, but this is not new.
To do this right, I think there’s going to have to be two things that happen. First, make sure the transport network has extremely low latency to time things correctly with video. Second, the sort of graphic overlay approach is annoying as all get out, and they need to take some drastic steps to integrate here, possibly with pretty advanced compositing techniques. There’s a lot more that needs to be worked out that I don’t think anyone has even thought of, but in Google fashion, this will probably be in beta for a decade.
The key to success here isn’t technical, it’s being able to make content deals. Google have the size to cut a deal, as with Hulu. Yeah, they’ll probably win.
yeah, but the announcement is about a platform for development and applications, not about a platform for delivering content.
Well…a little. But doing something like hooking up with a specialised website from NBA.com isn’t something that someone like Boxee can pull off. I guess I’d question how much of a line there is these days between apps and content – what is a dedicated iplayer app, for example?
Oh, and what will destroy broadcast: people like you also like…
That’ll kill any spare time you thought you might have had. For me anyhow. I’ll probably find myself up at 2am every night because they’ve stuck half a dozen sitcoms I love in a row and I just can’t pull myself off the couch.
(
Whoops, did I write that out loud?
I’m not really sure I quite get why I would want this kind of thing. I already get all my content on demand rather than when it’s broadcast. My TV is hooked up to a Ubuntu system running MythTV and XBMC, so I guess I’m not exactly the target demographic.
Yup, you’ve already got what they’re aiming at (fingers crossed).
Not sure that a deal with Hulu has been announced as asserted in the audiocast. Most news sources say it’s still undetermined whether Google TV will have Hulu.
I really must stop listening to this first in my podcast line-up in the car on the way home from work. I keep thinking of things to post and then forgetting by the time I actually get home again!
There is one big difference (unless I missed something) between these Google devices and Boxee – it watches DVB TV! It has a tv tuner in it. Yay! Other than MythTV, AFAICT, only Freevo (which kinda shat me) supports tv tuners and recording telly. Is it just really hard, or does everyone inside and outside America have plenty of access to internet TV (hulu, netflix, shitloads of bandwidth and high speed ADSL, whatever)?
It’s Boxee plus genuine television in a consumer device. That makes it relatively unique IMO.
Anyway, just wanted to say…
Fingers crossed it actually does support tv tuners otherwise I’ll look like a right prat. I’m sure I heard something about it being able to record, and tv would be the obvious source to record (to me).
Great shot, btw. Keep it up.
I didn’t get the impression it has a DVB-T tuner in it, I thought the idea was that you connect the hardware to your existing terrestrial, cable or satellite receiver via an HDMI cable.
They also mentioned an IP protocol for integration with those receivers for things like TV listings and setting recording schedule. Presumably no device yet supports this protocol?
I could have sworn the video mentioned being able to record something. That doesn’t preclude an external tuner I guess, so you’re probably right. If the only input for that is HDMI that’ll suck a bit because then I’ll have to go and find a new set top box. Mine does composite but nothing else.
I guess I’ll just have to wait to see the specs as the boxen become available.
Dammit. I had something else to say too, but have forgotten it.
Oh that’s right. I really liked your comments about advertising at the end, especially about newcomers to a market almost being obliged to try to do something different. It wouldn’t surprise me if they try to put ads in the black around 4:3 ratio screens showing 16:9 broadcasts. It wouldn’t bother me at all. Overlaying actual broadcasts with ads – that’d shit me.
Oh my word no. This would very definitely Be Evil.
Sorry, one last thing: The comment about Google trying to push Android into all sorts of spots and the comparison with pushing Windows as a mobile platform made me think. I really don’t think it’s a fair comparison, Jono, because Android was developed from the ground up as a mobile device platform, not a desktop operating system, like Windows. It was meant to support devices where the input mechanism were severely limited and so I think it’ll work pretty well on a tv. Just think of the setup as a very large mobile phone (ie low resolution) with a single big finger in the remote control (except that it also has the extra flexibility of the built-in keyboard).
Sounds like a winner setup to me.
Am I the only one who watches free-to-air broadcast television (DVB-T) any more? Kinda feels like that sometimes. I don’t feel like a Philistine.
Looks like they’re using the same graphics chip as in 3rd gen iPhones and iPod Touches. http://www.macrumors.com/2010/05/25/google-tv-utilizes-same-sgx535-graphics-processor-found-in-ipad-and-iphone-3gs/ At least some details are starting to filter through.
I thought Apple could have completely pwned this market by enhancing the Apple TV product of theirs years ago (add a tuner, an external hdd, and, though not absolutely necessary, expand the range of containers and codecs)[1]. It won’t surprise me at all if Apple do something like this in the near future in response (WWDC, perhaps)?
[1] I read a similar opinion to this somewhere and I thought it was here but perhaps not (hmm, maybe it was on the Boxee discussion).
I didn’t watch the announcement video, but I think that Google would have just enough clout to make TVs the interactive displays that they should be. As another commenter mentioned, even just showing your Google Calendar or local weather forecast on the dashboard would be a huge step over what most people have today. It could show gmail/chat notifications, or even hook a webcam up and do the video chat. These are very basic functions available on a PC, but it hasn’t penetrated many households just because of the complexity of it.
As another random thought about the Android interfacing, you could do a lot of the touchscreen functionality by using a paired android phone as the remote. This would be more a sense of just having a larger display for the same Android apps that are on your phone. You could also use your phone or the remote’s accelerometers ala the Wii.
IMO, the whole platform of `TV’ is outdated and obsolete. Everyone is just adding features to it to make it more like a computer. So why nut just put the TV in the dump and use a computer?
I do not own a TV and have absolutely no intention whatsoever of getting one. There is absolutely nothing on which is worth watching, everything on TV is mindless drivel.
I guess this is a pretty subjective thing and different people will find different content appealing but there are a few factors to consider.
Firstly, not everyone has a broadband connection, or even has access to one. I’m not talking about deepest darkest Peru, either. In Australia, where I live, most of the population is around the coast, mostly in large cities where broadband is (usually) available, but a significant portion of the population is either rural, or at least a long way out of town, over long, old phone lines that don’t support ADSL and satellite is either shit or stupidly expensive. For example, my father lives in a town about 150km out of Adelaide (capital of South Australia). The town he lives in has ADSL, no worries, however he lives 6km out of town on a block with vineyards. He can’t get ADSL even out there. Although it doesn’t worry me too much, it bugs him no end that so much new technology is simply not available to him because it assumes a broadband connection and a decent quota (5Gb or more).
Secondly, there is (at least in Australia) a huge amount of decent content on free-to-air television. Not all worthwhile TV is serials of Lost or House or Desperate Housewives. It’s docos (primarily BBC ones, I might add) and, though it may not get that much traction in this community, coverage of sport. Yes, some of these are available over the internet, but not always, and certainly not up to date. Last night I watched a big rugby league match and it would be an absolute PITA to avoid news services until I’d downloaded a copy that someone had recorded then uploaded so I could simply not know the result before seeing the match. Watching the match live is far more satisfying. Can you imagine if significant portions of the world didn’t watch the Soccer World Cup final live on TV but were all waiting to torrent it?
Sure, I know streaming is a way to overcome this, but it’s not available everywhere, and though it may be coming, it’s not going to arrive for quite some years.
Just thought I’d make the case anyhow.
The other thing is that live TV takes a lot of the effort of choice away too. It provides variety and novelty, so it can’t be all bad.
Anyhoo, just my two cents.
D.
Hey as long as it’s open source and as long as they don’t lock people out Boxee might still be able to cut a piece of the action and actually profit from Google TV.
Why Android? It’s about developers.
If you say “Here’s Google TV, and here’s a new OS to learn to develop for”, developers will go “yeah, right, I have time for that”.
If you sasy “Here’s Google TV, and it runs Android, just like that phone you already know how to develop for”, developers may well say “Hey, I could try that out.”
And the key thing is: those would be the reactions even if the amount of actual effort the developer needed to expend in the two scenarios was the same.
That’s an interesting point, and no mistake. I hadn’t thought of that.
And, what’s more, the Android TV-specific apps which get built as a result of developer interest will boost the platform even if no-one ever runs an Android phone-specific app on their TV. The “we have lots of apps” thing isn’t vital to the success of the platform; getting the developers of those apps to write TV apps is.
I think this is a very interesting point, especially with Apple apparently doing something similar. With Apple, the apps from its AppStore are starting to splinter a bit with iPad vs iPhone apps, and soon we’ll have AppleTV apps too, presumably, and it’ll be interesting to see what inconsistencies in features there are between the platforms.
In contrast, Android, although originally a phone OS, has been pushed into a variety of platforms already, so that experience may stand it in good stead.
The other thing is the mechanism by which apps get to the Google/Apple TV devices – Apple will presumably want to vet the crap out of any apps (with varying degrees of success) whereas the Google Marketplace will remain much more open.
Good times ahead.