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Google TV What happened?


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2012 Feb 10, 4:55am   11,121 views  30 comments

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So my wife tells me last week she wanted to get our youngest a Television for her room. She's gone with out one since we've moved here in September 2010.
She just wants one to use as a monitor for her computer. For watching Guitar tutors on Youtube, or PhotoShop for her Photos, rather than for watching TV.

So last Saturday we went shopping and as it turns out. Sony and Google are in a licensing dispute over who gets the most money out of the deal. Well actually Google TV didn't get received well, and as a result the 42 inch sets everywhere were marked down from 999 to 599. This was about the range, perhaps a little more, for a LED 42 we planed on spending. It was a Sony that was good selling point for a LED in that price range with Google TV or with out, actually I wasn't that familiar with Google TV and I hadn't been following them.

I was expecting Andriod TV, but it's more like a glorified version of any Net demand menu/capabilities of any decent WiFi enabled Television set.
It's a good thing we bought it for the Sony name and quality and not on Google brand alone. It's got a QWERTY keyboard though on the remote control, which is shaped more like a Console Game wireless controller than a remote control.
And it has a browser, but it's about time all Televisions have a browser built in them Google enhanced or not.

I've certainly have been watching a movie in recent years, and have been impulsed for that brief moment, to want to click on screen or ingrained to interact with it somehow. I was hoping this would be that device. It just didn't deliver, seemed to work better with OTA signals, but couldn't get it to control the Xfinity.
It had potential but the first adopters must feel robbed. They bought on good faith that Google would release an even better version, with in a year or two.
I have mixed feelings about this one, on one hand I'm weary of Google, on the other hand I see the internet and TV marriage the end of Cable and Satellite.
I imagine a day when you'll log into HBO and buy blocks of time. So the people that like HBO, will just only pay to watch original content and shows, and not have to pay for the old or B grade movies you never watch.

For now Google TV looks down for the count. Google's latest offering is a WiFi music hub. Perhaps they just spreading them selves too thin.

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1   TPB   2012 Feb 10, 5:47am  

Yes exactly, it's like Google TV created competitive features rather than innovative features. I was having a blast with my LED plugged into my HDMI on my Laptop and watching Netflix, before they got greedy. Finding a movie and getting it up and running with a movie was three times faster than scrolling on my other daughters Toshiba LED TV netflix interface.

2   SFace   2012 Feb 10, 6:04am  

Sadly Sony, does not make as good of a TV as:

Sharp Elite
Samsung
and Panasonic

So they have to compete with the "smart" features, which would be Sony's competitive edge with the reputation of Google. Even then Samsung's Hub and Panasonic's Viera Connect are just as good if not better. Google TV does not add much value over competitor or even separate boxes like Apple TV, ROKU, laptop or other devices.

3   nope   2012 Feb 10, 2:59pm  

Holy shit, did you really just claim that Samsung and Panasonic's built in "smart TV" is better than the google tv integration on sony sets?

This tells me that either:

a.) You're lying

or

b.) You've never used any of them.

I happen to own both a samsung and panasonic TV (both less than two years old), and a GTV companion box. The built in "smart tv" stuff is beyond useless. They're slow as shit, buggy as shit, and only kind of sort of halfway work.

Samsung makes the best quality LED and LCD sets, and panasonic makes the best quality plasmas, but their software is shit, shit, shit, and I wish they'd just stop wasting time making it.

GTV isn't all that useful, but at least it actually works.

Personally, I think the whole "make my TV like a computer" thing is dumb. A TV should be a monitor, and that's about it. I might be OK with built in speakers for situations where a proper sound system was impractical or too expensive. Build in widi / airplay / dlna and just let me control everything from my phone or a tablet.

4   TPB   2012 Feb 11, 12:49am  

I think for people that surf the net for 90% of their computer usage, and especially for those that keep the TV on in the background while they do it. There's a demographic in them, for a format, that nobody has gotten right yet.

5   nope   2012 Feb 12, 5:35am  

The GOP says

I think for people that surf the net for 90% of their computer usage, and especially for those that keep the TV on in the background while they do it. There's a demographic in them, for a format, that nobody has gotten right yet.

William E Baughb

Oh, plenty of people have 'gotten it right'. What's stopping us from actually being able to use it is unfortunate content exclusivity deals.

The whole reason why you can't legally watch most TV shows from a boxee or google tv unit is because the content producers have given the cable / satellite networks exclusive rights to that content appearing on televisions.

The content industry is notoriously slow to adapt to changing technology. They'll get there eventually, like they did with music, but it might be a while.

6   thomas.wong1986   2012 Feb 12, 5:44am  

Kevin says

Personally, I think the whole "make my TV like a computer" thing is dumb. A TV should be a monitor, and that's about it. I might be OK with built in speakers for situations where a proper sound system was impractical or too expensive. Build in widi / airplay / dlna and just let me control everything from my phone or a tablet.

Some PC features could be built into any TV... such as USB input reader and built in/swapable harddrive to record programs. My dvd player/recorder Philips DVDR3576Hhas a 160gb HD to record programs.. Seems a simple feature like this would be highly desirable.

7   nope   2012 Feb 12, 12:15pm  

"Recording programs" is also a horribly outdated idea. Why should I have to record anything if it's all available on demand?

8   TPB   2012 Feb 12, 12:36pm  

What I want to do is click on a character and imdb, or google info then, or list on demand content featuring them. Click on a building in a scene, and have google find relevant information. If the inquisitive information was as available and accessible as the advertisement content, then I could see that being usefully different. It would have to be a lot more than occasional Car advert, Ikea, Clothing company ads and such. And the content would always be hidden, not like a pop up i.e. VH1's Pop up video. It would be more on demand, when you click on something. Almost anything you click on would give you relevant information. Both informative, of course adverts.

9   mdovell   2012 Feb 12, 9:34pm  

Ironically I bought a Logitech Revue and think it is great. Granted I think the starting price of $300 was way overpriced (I paid $80)

Yes it cannot exactly replace a pc for everything but a fair amount of things do work.

Streaming audio is fine. I can hear radio stations from all around the planet
Streaming video is fine. I now have access to a fair amount of international channels that I could not get with cable.

There's pretty much such a massive amount of free video that it kinda nullifies cable.

Office apps actually work (so does google documents) although I will admit that working with speadsheets on a 1080p monitor that's feet wide is weird.

The keyboard works fine although I think the back button is located way too close to the mouse button.

The OS I'm still getting used to because many programs don't exit. But you can force programs to end.

I think the next upgrade will enable more. I recommend Redux for an app

For the most part tv's are starting to become a bit of the same. Everything is in hd, everything is a flat screen. I'd argue LCD has become the standard (plasma is nice but I hate the glare of the screen). I can't see anyone really needing to pay more than $600-700 for something really decent. Because so much of them look the same the only other selling points are going to be apps. But I think the prices will go down further since there's going to be $100 boxes for google tv and others coming out. It is interesting in that there have been attempts in the past like web tv and gateway had some huge monitor back in the day. There's debates on content which is why hulu might be blocked but sometimes there's a work around. It is going to scare the heck out of networks because unlike cable contracts and even antennas a web connection bypasses any local market and contract.

10   zzyzzx   2012 Feb 13, 1:29am  

Kevin says

"Recording programs" is also a horribly outdated idea. Why should I have to record anything if it's all available on demand?

Not everything is available on demand.

Not everybody has high speed internet.

I only have antenna service, and with only that I can record more TV than I can watch, and I don't have any monthly fees either.

11   mdovell   2012 Feb 13, 9:25pm  

In some cable services (mine included) you cannot get on demand of a show that just aired. It usually takes a week or so. That can be ok for some of a season but not so much for a cliffhanger episode.

Also is that on demand can change. I've seen interesting content I'd love to share but it only lasts for about a month or so. Sometimes on demand has so many choices that there's no real outlet to search.

12   clambo   2012 Feb 14, 8:38am  

Don't worry. Apple will fix it and they'll sell a gazallion of them.

13   TPB   2012 Feb 14, 9:52am  

No Apple will make a device that charges you .99 cents every time you change the Chanel. The Part of the Operation that made people feel like they were getting a ROI for the service, died.

If Steve were alive today, he tell ya, the Jobs aren't coming back because he can pay cheap slave labor in China. And that would be the end of the whole Foxcomm fiasco. He would be hero for saying it, and books would be written around his business philosophy. But make no mistake, that arrogant integral part of Apple is dead.

I don't think Apple has more than two or three hands left in this Poker game. The bad side is, when Apple crashes and they will, they will take the rest of the industry down with it. The old "one tech company bad = all tech companies bad" knee jerk reaction.

14   thomas.wong1986   2012 Feb 14, 10:37am  

The GOP says

If Steve were alive today, he tell ya, the Jobs aren't coming back because he can pay cheap slave labor in China. And that would be the end of the whole Foxcomm fiasco. He would be hero for saying it, and books would be written around his business philosophy. But make no mistake, that arrogant integral part of Apple is dead.

They are not exactly slave labor at Foxcomm.. they much happier having your job and making good money based on their standards and they would be pretty pissed off if they heard all their jobs in China were to disappear back to the US. Think what the alternative would be. Im not even sure we can dislodge those jobs back out of China. ..what do you tell them.. dont make anymore of these products anymore. We dont control what goes on in China.

15   thomas.wong1986   2012 Feb 14, 10:40am  

clambo says

Don't worry. Apple will fix it and they'll sell a gazallion of them.

Funny, how we never had in Silicon Valley all this buzz hype in the 80s and 90s.. its a damn shame, one has to hype when we are well past the peak. I keep telling people.. "too bad, your 30 years too late"

16   TPB   2012 Feb 14, 2:12pm  

thomas.wong1986 says

..what do you tell them.. dont make anymore of these products anymore.

Yeah that worked rather well here in the US circa 1984.

And that's exactly what they told us, in the height of our manufacturing capabilities. Now Big Biz is trying to say, we're ill equipt and aren't smart enough for assembly line work if the work were to come back. What are they basing that on, DMV and Burger King employees?

17   mdovell   2012 Feb 14, 11:17pm  

Well we have manufacturing in the country but it is more about engineering rather than the low level assembly line work that existed before. Some jobs technically are coming back with the energy prices being what they are. Usually the argument is that labor is the most controllable price. but it can be argued that it might be best to minimize the uncontrollable costs rather than maximize the controllable.

Apple made so many mistakes it isn't even funny. Don't get me wrong Apple makes products with a great design...but a great design doesn't always mean good things in the long run. The studabaker Avanti was pretty advanced for the time but it didn't last.

When Steve Jobs went back to Apple he pretty much killed the OS and decided to take his NeXT system and put it into the os...so it's basically linux based but it is closed to outside development unless you have permission (hence they control the app store..just like the itunes store)

Android might not be as pretty but there's more openness to the process. Linux gradually gained much more influence in the past 12 years largely because it was free. If you have a product that is free and some economic hard times and some just doing things for the heck out of it eventually apps build up and you don't have to pay.

The ipad is a great device but at the same time if you have a ipad do you really need a macbook or powermac? ipads have keyboards so this is starting to simply be a lower priced item with higher costs for the 3G service.

18   FunTime   2012 Feb 15, 3:55am  

Both LG and Samsung were showing TVs with GoogleTV at this year's CES.

19   thomas.wong1986   2012 Feb 15, 5:51am  

The GOP says

And that's exactly what they told us, in the height of our manufacturing capabilities. Now Big Biz is trying to say, we're ill equipt and aren't smart enough for assembly line work if the work were to come back.

Cant blame the US mfg for moving US jobs to Asia..

You can blame the Japanese for dumping their products on US markets below the "cost of productions" in order to capture most of the market share.

20   thomas.wong1986   2012 Feb 15, 5:53am  

mdovell says

The ipad is a great device but at the same time if you have a ipad do you really need a macbook or powermac? ipads have keyboards so this is starting to simply be a lower priced item with higher costs for the 3G service

Its a great product for seniors who like to read and chat with friends and other leisure activities. It does what it says and does it well.

21   nope   2012 Feb 15, 4:52pm  

mdovell says

The ipad is a great device but at the same time if you have a ipad do you really need a macbook or powermac? ipads have keyboards so this is starting to simply be a lower priced item with higher costs for the 3G service

If you work in any technical profession, yes. The tools needed to write software, do design work, architecture, drafting, and a million other things just don't work on ipads today.

On these issues, it's not simply a matter of docking; the devices aren't powerful enough. There are orders of magnitude difference in processing power between a macbook pro and an ipad, and even the MBP is not usually enough for the necessary programs.

My workstation is a 6 core machine with 24GB of RAM, and it's still frequently bogged down by the apps that I need to do my job.

Eventually network links will be good enough that you can do a lot of this with a thin client, but we're at least a decade away from that.

22   RentingForHalfTheCost   2012 Feb 16, 4:57am  

GoogleTV sucked, just like AppleTV. Buy a $99 Roku as well as connect up your old laptop to the TV and screw the big guys. They spend too much time in executive meetings throwing around presentations showing how they will make Billions from the TV market. Skype owns the home video market (TV aided), Netflicks, Amazon, Hulu owns the shows, cell phones own the mobile. These are not going to change just because Apple or Google jumps into the scene. Cisco tried its hand in charging for home video and that failed miserably as well. Give it up people.

23   thomas.wong1986   2012 Feb 16, 10:21am  

Kevin says

My workstation is a 6 core machine with 24GB of RAM, and it's still frequently bogged down by the apps that I need to do my job.
Eventually network links will be good enough that you can do a lot of this with a thin client, but we're at least a decade away from that.

What you need is something called a Mainframe.. its a beautiful thing, that gets the job done. MPU, parallel processing, speed, internet enabled. Smoking hot and reliable.

24   nope   2012 Feb 16, 6:47pm  

thomas.wong1986 says

Kevin says

My workstation is a 6 core machine with 24GB of RAM, and it's still frequently bogged down by the apps that I need to do my job.

Eventually network links will be good enough that you can do a lot of this with a thin client, but we're at least a decade away from that.

What you need is something called a Mainframe.. its a beautiful thing, that gets the job done. MPU, parallel processing, speed, internet enabled. Smoking hot and reliable.

Oh sweet, I can run fireworks and eclipse on a mainframe now. Thanks for pointing out the totally obvious thing that I missed in my fifteen years in this industry.

25   mdovell   2012 Feb 17, 2:25am  

thomas.wong1986 says

Some PC features could be built into any TV... such as USB input reader and built in/swapable harddrive to record programs. My dvd player/recorder Philips DVDR3576Hhas a 160gb HD to record programs.. Seems a simple feature like this would be highly desirable.

Yeah my old hd set had a usb built in...it was ok. But the new one pretty much reads almost all the videos I can throw at it. I won't go on a limb and say it replaces a blue ray but it is pretty good. Add some wifi and pretty soon the cable and satellite companies get scared.

I think netflix grew too fast and too soon. Amazon is charging a pretty low about for it's streaming service ($79 or $39 for a student). And you also get free 2 day air on shipping so it piggybacks on other aspects. Google is just too big to ignore. If the network want a piece of the action they have to deal with them eventually.

26   eric4brs   2012 Jun 28, 3:14am  

Getting back to the original topic: GoogleTV. I was an early adopter, buying the Logitech box after it was marked down to 99 dollars. I've been happy overall.

Killer apps: GoogleTV search. Example: I wanted to tune in a hockey game and couldn't remember the channel. Searched hockey. Up game icons. I quickly clicked the specific game I wanted and it tuned my set to that game. Google is searching across many providers, so this is incredible I think. Of course a company that doesn't want to cooperate won't show up.

You can also create your own GoogleTV apps. Many developers have done so. There are many interesting "off-Broadway" channels available.

Kinks: Netflix. Seems to be a question of Netflix engineers not creating a proper app versus Google simply fixing it for them and making their customers happy. Every so often I have to remove the app and reinstall it. It's been months since the last time, but I'm not sure the problem is over with. This is something a non-expert would give up on. And no Netflix is a big loss. On the other hand, Netflix is starting to only stream older and lousier movies, so most of the time I exit Netflix without finding anything to watch there.

-Eric

27   🎂 Tenpoundbass   2012 Jun 28, 4:20am  

I ditched Netflix last year when they got full of them selves.
It was not a difficult decision though. I found my self spending hours searching for content to watch that I either hadn't already saw or was something I would actually watch.

More often than not, I would start searching around 8pm then notice it was 11pm and time for bed already, with out ever finding anything to watch.

28   thomas.wong1986   2012 Jun 28, 4:36am  

CaptainShuddup says

More often than not, I would start searching around 8pm then notice it was 11pm and time for bed already, with out ever finding anything to watch.

Yes, welcome to "disruptive technology" as Google or Netflix would call it. Dont forget your paying $$$ every month for Netflix, cable, and internet to have over 500 choices.

You had better luck with standard 3-4 major broadcasters (CBS, NBC, ABC and Local) as we had before. At least programs were reviewed heavily and judged on content appeal and how well it did.. And they did some great TV programs vs today.

"disruptive technology" today really sucks bad and is of poor quality!

29   leo707   2012 Jun 29, 4:21am  

thomas.wong1986 says

And they did some great TV programs vs today.

A lot of those older programs are available streaming on Netflix.

30   thomas.wong1986   2012 Jun 29, 9:15pm  

leoj707 says

A lot of those older programs are available streaming on Netflix.

its not the older programs im talking about, but the quality methods and viewer testing of new programs which broadcasters, in the past, would use to gauge if their ideas would compete against the other 2 major competitors during prime time... thus capture more viewers/ratings/ad dollars.

Today, the broadcasters (all 200-500 channels) dont care about quality, because there is too much choices and competition. So they throw all sort of junk on the tube. So as CaptainShuddup said.. you waste time trying to find some good programming.

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