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Google TV - I don't get it
Houndx
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm trying to understand. I want to but the more I read the less I get it. I mean, if I had DISH then I'd kind of see a point. It could search my personal content and DVR content all at once and that's neatish. Yes, it does Netflix but so does my 360 - in addition to playing games and acting as a Media Center Extender(which is a whole different thing I'm not going to get into right now).
So I have a 360 and I don't have DISH, so the remaining features I see are Amazon and ummmm... Youtube? Amazon rentals seem to average $3.99, from my admittedly brief browsing, doesn't seem to offer much HD content. I guess this is just another thing I don't get. Netflix offers one disc at a time with bluray plus streaming content for $10.99. The prices just don't work out for Amazon to make any sense at all.
What am I missing? Why all the excitement and great reviews? Are people that desperate for Youtube on their TV? Are there features I've somehow missed? Would I be more excited if I got my content via torrent?
So I have a 360 and I don't have DISH, so the remaining features I see are Amazon and ummmm... Youtube? Amazon rentals seem to average $3.99, from my admittedly brief browsing, doesn't seem to offer much HD content. I guess this is just another thing I don't get. Netflix offers one disc at a time with bluray plus streaming content for $10.99. The prices just don't work out for Amazon to make any sense at all.
What am I missing? Why all the excitement and great reviews? Are people that desperate for Youtube on their TV? Are there features I've somehow missed? Would I be more excited if I got my content via torrent?
Houndx on
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I don't think it's a joke anymore.
Just by hooking the device up, you'll get tv-ized versions of TBS, TNT, CNN, HBO, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim in addition to anything already received through cable/satelite.
Is there any sort of subscriber charge for this? Because (at least with U-Verse) HBO alone is $14 a month.
Edit: Google TV is bringing the possibility of Android-style app development to TVs. That could lead to some interesting things. But whether that's of any great value really depends on what app developers come up with. Apps for smartphones and tablets strike me as potent because they let me do things while I'm mobile. My TV isn't mobile though. If I'm at home, what app would I want to pay for on my TV that I couldn't find as free software for my PC, which is also in my home?
Other major concerns:
The television in the living room tends to be the only gathering place for families when it comes to watching entertainment. If it catches on, people will start demanding that internet websites and web content start being age rated.
Also, "apps" on the TV? God. Just because "apps" is a buzz word it must "do" "apps"?
I'm all for it. Then again, I was thinking of building an HTPC to begin with.
it's about options. yes, those other devices you mentioned do similar things, but some people don't have an xbox to stream their netflix off of, etc.
Yeah, I'm getting flashes of webTV. lol
Yes, WebTV was a joke. That doesn't mean that all implimentations of the web on a television are impossible.
The ammount of time I've had to listen to people bitchign about not being able to watch Hulu in their living room begs to differ with you all.
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Which looks more or less like the features of a current comcast or Verizon set-top box. The problem with web tv wasn't that people didn't want the features at all, it was that they didn't want to pay an EXTRA fee for them.
I'm not saying that Google TV is going to be some huge succcess (I'm not sayign that it won't, either. I'm waiting to see). But to say that there is no reason anyone would want it is truely missing the mark. People DO want to watch internet videos on their TVs...
I build HTPCs and I was indeed excited reading about Google TV until I got to the page where it said I needed to either buy a special TV or a doohickey from Logitech or Sony. Have you heard there's a way to get it to work on a DIY HTPC?
Actually, I'd say the problem with WebTV is that it existed in a time when not only the internet wasn't as mature and necessary to the common person as it is now (most people in 1999 didn't have or even care about broadband), HDTVs weren't a thing that people owned. Have you tried to view text or browse the web on an SD set? It's awful.
GoogleTV (and set top boxes similar to it) are attempting to bring the web capabilities of your computer, or more aptly, of your mobile devices, to your television set. Have you ever sat in the living room watching TV and thought "Man, shit, I wonder what time Mad Men is on?" and googled it on your phone? I know I have, because it's a billion times easier than using Comcast's convoluted interface to find showtimes. Now think about how much easier it would be to just type "Mad Men" on your TV, and get showtimes, the ability to set that show to record on your DVR, an IMDB link, and all of your previously DVR'd episodes of Mad Men in one place. Think of the GoogleTV as it is now as your cable box, if your cable box wasn't an awful piece of shit, and wasn't powered by older technology than printers. It's a pretty awesome concept, and though DiSH is the first provider to sign on, they almost definitely won't be the only one.
And on the importance of apps, of course it needs apps. "Apps" aren't just a buzzword, applications are central to any computing platform. On its own, right now, the GoogleTV box fills a niche. Once developers start porting their apps to the thing, it turns the TV into a central media/information portal. It is a big deal that there's finally something meant for the living room that has app support out of the box.
To be honest, I think the only thing that will hinder something like GoogleTV from taking over the living room will be the studios blocking their content from appearing on the devices or attempting to monetize them. Hulu has already blocked video from playing on GoogleTV devices. I'm sure more networks will follow until someone figures out how to end this absurd notion in the television industry that it's OK for people watch on their computers but not their TVs.
Android apps will not save this thing. Many popular Android apps don't even make sense in a living room context. There could be some really good apps for Google TV. I can't think of what they'd do, and neither can Google apparently, because in their own marketing they state that "The coolest thing about Google TV is that we don't even know what the coolest thing about it will be." (Go to google.com/tv, click Take Tour, click the button in the lower right labeled "Why?"). They are literally relying on app developers to create the value proposition for them and I don't think it's going to happen the way they expect.
Look at it this way... As an Android developer, if you come up with a good app concept the only thing you're likely competing with are other Android app developers. As a Google TV developer, you're not only competing with other Google TV developers, you're also competing with every other device in the user's home. It's going to be a lot harder for app developers to come up with app ideas that the users haven't already addressed by buying something for their home that fills the need.
I think you're generalizing pretty heavily based on your own experiences here. I know plenty of people who are gadget-centric and watch a lot of TV, and television quality has been steadily increasing over the past decade. Maybe your general Dancing with the Stars audiences aren't going to buy the GoogleTV, but people who are into premium content, quality television, and film are already taking it into their own hands to build things like HTPCs to fill this gap. They use them to store media, watch purchased content, watch hulu and netflix videos on their televisions, etc. Wouldn't a more integrated and easy-to-use zero-setup solution help to bring this kind of control to the masses?
How does something being on your TV make it any more competitive with other devices in the home than your typical Android app? Maybe location-based and navigation apps don't make sense in the living room, but large format information display apps and content delivery apps do. No one's going to use it to read a book or check in to FourSquare, but they'll probably enjoy email and internet. It also opens up huge potential for social integration in live TV like ABC's My Generation iPad app, but I understand this kind of thing isn't yet going to be enough to sell units. The point is, the potential is there.
Besides, the ability to run user-created apps doesn't mean everything you're going to use will be made by some small team who came up with a cute bird-launching game. Content providers want to excise control over who can see their content and when, and they'll be the ones developing the real killer apps for GoogleTV and similar platforms. HBO, ESPN, ABC, CBS, MTV. These are the people who want to get back into the end user's living room, and scheduled content isn't doing it anymore. On-demand music videos on your TV and stereo, like currently offered at MTVMusic? This is prime territory for TV-ification, especially if they manage to squeeze some ad revenue and metrics out of it.
We sit on these forums, generally, as educated techo-geeks who have their fingers on the pulse of everything technology related. As gamers/geeks/whatever we can easily pick apart the service because we have so many things already at our disposal. We don't see things like "youtube on t.v." being that big of a deal, because some of us have monitors bigger than our T.V, anyway lol.
Now, the population of "Farmvillers*" out there, this is where it gets interesting. They have enough experience with technology that they could see this as a huge and awesome thing, without realizing there are already options to do this. Remember these are people that think the "internet" is Google.
How many of you have told someone to type in a URL and they put it in Googles search field? Yeah.
So that being said, this market is huge for them. They are going to re-sell the internet to people. And people will buy it.
App wise, there are a few things that I could come up with that work that are already added.
Surf Youtube/cartoons/whatever on your T.V. and with the shake of your iPhone/Touch/Android you could auto-transfer that shit, carry it with you. With literally everything coming packaged with cameras now-a-days, broadcasting yourself is easy as shit, and with things on your T.V. combined with Google Voice/Chat/Video - the days of video conferencing everywhere are coming true.
It's a step in the right direction to start putting Google as the centerpiece for all the technology in the home. Once they own your workstation and your T.V. they own your house. That is where most people live.
Google = Skynet.
Embrace it.
Haven't heard, but I'm speculating that since android apps will work with it, that it's android based. I fully expect it to either be hacked or provided by google sometime after the first hardware and updates go out.
As for the special doohickey, if that doohickey from Logitech/Sony is priced right ($100-$200, right now the Logitech is at $299, if this catches on I expect that to go down), I am willing to pay that to gain a small form factor, solid integration and minimal maintance then try and cobble together yet another atom based micro-atx box with boxee on it, or use one of my old mac mini's with Plex.
My hopes are that since it is a google venture, that the platform OS and app dev will be open, or more open, and customizable.
The home entertainment space is a well-established market, unlike the mobile internet-enabled application space, which hardly existed as a market until 2008. Any app that you're going to sell into the home entertainment space is going to compete with the plethora of other products and devices already aimed at that target market. The smartphone market has been experiencing rampant growth the past few years, meaning lots of fresh opportunities for smartphone app developers. Home entertainment doesn't have anything like that double-digit growth, it's a completely different scene. The existing players are entrenched, the turnover rate on devices is far lower, opportunities for app developers are going to be fewer and further between.
I think any device aiming to delivering apps to the home entertainment space will need to succeed on its own merits before you could expect apps to drive adoption. iPhone was a solid seller for a full year before the App Store was launched. Apps may have driven the second wave, but they certainly didn't drive the first wave. I don't think hypothetical Google TV apps can drive the first wave of its adoption either. You need an installed base to attract developers before you can expect the kind of wide range that the App Store and Android Market display, and you need the wide range of apps before you can sell the device on the basis of its app collection. I don't think Android apps can act as a bridge because so many of them rely on mobility as a pillar of their value.
I'm not even certain that TV-centric apps have anything like the kind of potential that smartphone apps had. Smartphones can appear in many contexts. Walking around, hiking, biking, in bed, sitting on the can, on a plane, on a train, on a bus, at a concert, in a mall, on your couch, etc. Every one of those contexts has possible consumer needs that an app developer can explore. Google TV has only one context: next to your TV. I think the number of possible use cases is orders of magnitude smaller for Google TV apps. As a result, I just don't think app store lightning will strike the home entertainment market with anything like the same kind of force it had on smartphones.
Well, I'm a geek that builds HTPCs and I want to be excited about it.. I'm pretty excited about getting my Ceton InfiniTV, hopefully soonish.
I think this is the only part of your thought that I'm missing. My opinion is that the only thing we've seen close to what google is trying to do are things like the boxee box, Roku, and a scattered effort to include a netflix and youtube app in your PS3/Wii/Blu-ray player, etc. If anything, what the home entertainment model needs is a unified platform that will have a ton of backing and name recognition to get it off the ground on it's own merits, with an app store to come in afterwards to provide longevity. For some reason, that previous statement sounds very familiar...
I remember when the iPhone became more reality than rumor, much of the same things were said about it that you are saying about google tv. The phone would have to compete with the entrenched market, dominated by motorola, nokia, et al. It was overprices, under powered, an iPod taped to a razr. I'm not saying that google tv will be as much of a success as the iPhone, your point that the home entertainment market has a much lower turnover rate is true, and we will not have new feature sets to push a google tv version 2/3/4 to generate buzz and sales.
I'm rambling...but I had similar thoughts when google had a crazy idea to enter the phone market. What more could google do that the iPhone has already done for the market? I see the TV interface market to be much more of a wide open opportunity than the phone market was, and therefore, I believe they will have some success.
"Was cursing, in broken english at his team, and at our team. made fun of dead family members and mentioned he had sex with a dog."
"Hope he dies tbh but a ban would do."
It just seems... every company wants to make their own box thing, why don't they let people use real computers with the TV instead of inflexible things that you are stuck with.
People don't want to drag a real computer in to the living room, and deal with all of the different hook-ups, and such.
Think of these boxes as "media consoles", akin to game consoles. There are those who are perfectly fine with their PC, but others who prefer a closed solution so that they don't have to think about it.
Power/HDMI/NIC (which I could use wireless if I wanted to but stream so much stuff, gotta use physical. Also, its about the size of a small receiver.
3 connections and small... is different from the GoogleTV or new Boxee units? Those are smaller, got me there.
Now if you wanted to argue that most people wont put up with Windows/nix as their DVR, I would agree. Thats why I'm saying I wish GoogleTV came in a software download to install yourself, IN addition to the hardware they are already releasing.
"Was cursing, in broken english at his team, and at our team. made fun of dead family members and mentioned he had sex with a dog."
"Hope he dies tbh but a ban would do."
That's kinda what I'm saying too. I wish a real computer was made easy to hook up and that a company would supply the software or operating system to integrate.
Of course I wouldn't necessarily want an ATX computer for the TV if I had a big TV in addition to a small computer monitor at a desk but I'd be great to be able to put together the hardware yourself. Also, for a great deal of people around the world who live in apartments, people should have the option to run ethernet to the TV or use their computer for two different display outputs. Just make whatever hardware or cables makes it the easiest. Why the heck do TV monitors and computer monitors still use different ports? What are these manufacturers big problem? Just make this easier. There should not be such a thing as TV or PC monitor, it should just be "LED" monitor or such. Isn't the only difference that for TV signals it will always come in at 720 or 1080 so you have to make sure to get the right resolution? Aye, I guess that already makes it one step too hard for most people...AAAAGH!
We are techies. the average person is not. To us setting up an htpc is no different from setting up a bluray player, but we are talking about people who pay best buy to "install" their bluray player for them in the first place
Customers want always there when they want it - on their time - entertainment.
Media owners want you to pay each and everytime you watch their content.
TV Stations want to make money selling ads.
What we are going to see very quickly is a shift from TV "From the airwaves/cable" to the internet delivering pay per view and subscription based content. These devices are the medium that keeps that big display in your living room valid once rabbit ears die for good (the theory that there is free content just floating over the air / nominal fee floating across coax)
TV stations are going to die . Just like the newspaper industry. (and if you don't believe me... television is going the way of radio - syndicated "live and local" news shows that are generically produced someplace in the midwest and fed to your house as "your news" just like morning radio shows!)
We will see re-entrenched efforts by content owners to launch their own delivery methods and the internet is the way.
Unfortunately this all will result in failed platforms, dead ends and serious pay walls.