Friday, May 21, 2010

Google TV - Your television with a keyboard

At their annual Google I/O conference, Google announced yesterday their new TV software called GoogleTV. The new product is designed to integrate your television with the Web in such a way that you can easily search for programs (using Google search, of course) and view them on the air, on your integrated DVR, or on the web (at Google-owned YouTube, of course). The new system will be available integrated into televisions or as stand-alone boxes.

The new devices will require a keyboard for input, raising the question, "If you're going to need a keyboard to interact with your television anyway, why not just hook up a cheap computer instead?" It will be interesting to see if it catches on, or is relegated to a "hobby" like Apple's AppleTV device.

4 comments:

"Nick" said...

You really have to have a keyboard to do any real kind of search. The question is how will the keyboard connect... wirelessly? IR like a remote? Will it be an app on your phone or tablet? A "tablet" style device itself?

I'd also throw out... when XBox came out, people said the same thing (why not just hook up a computer to the TV) and look where that ended up:)

Count me as wait and see.

BH said...

What will make this work is the quality of the search. Just having a large screen computer doesn't work.

Nomad said...

"Nick",

My bet is they go with BlueTooth. Lots of cheap hardware already available, and Google has no stake in making money off of proprietary hardware. They just want their ads everywhere.

I just wonder if Joe Sixpack will want to mess with a keyboard to watch TV, when he is used to a relatively simple remote. And if Cable companies won't be opposed to giving up ad revenue to Google.

- Nomad

Ward said...

Awesome! Another way for Google to find out more unwarranted information about us without informing us of their invasive policies! I can't wait!