

Demo of Google TV (Skip to 32:00) [video] - jgv
http://www.promeas.com/ifa-tv/webcasts2010/keynote5/index.html

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hkuo
I'd like to offer what I believe is the humongous missed thinking on every
product like this and any service that aims to mix internet and TV. Maybe it's
been done and I've somehow missed it. But I'd like to call it the Stumbleupon
feature.

All of these services ask me to think about what I want to watch. But there's
this thing that we all do, and I absolutely think there isn't a single person
that doesn't do this, and it's called "channel surfing". You just flip and
flip and flip to see if there's something more interesting than you're
currently watching, or you've just finished watching a program and you want to
explore your options.

Stumbleupon provides exactly this, but much more. Stumbleupon is purpose-built
specifically for boredom, and over time tailors itself to you. Next, next,
next, ohh that's cool, next, next, next. That's exactly what I want from a TV
experience. Additionally, I'd be able to save and share with friends.

An example of how this feature would differentiate itself from current methods
is, I like a lot of TED videos, but there's also a lot I find incredibly
boring. With current interfaces, I have to click a TED category and then sift
through all of their offerings. And how the heck would I even know if I'll
like something until I play it? Blegh! The Stumbleupon feature would know what
type of content I like, and would be able to pull out TED videos that it
thinks I would find interesting, and all I would have had to do was click
"Next", and it would eventually be presented to me.

That's all I got to say. Add a dang Stumbleupon feature, and an internet-tv
box will be MONEY.

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abraham
Already exists on YouTube: <http://www.youtube.com/leanback>

Edit: Just noticed they showed Leanback in the demo.

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hkuo
True, what they have is pretty darn close. As long as it offered me TV and
Movie level content and gave me a custom-tailored feed based on what I like.

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abraham
YouTube is starting to offer movies and probably TV shows to follow. The
stream is personalized based on your activity and the activity of your
friends.

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buro9
I really hope that they improve this, it failed in so many ways.

1) When in Top Gear and watching the action, I'll buy a ferrari. This is a
demo of screen-in-screen, yet bringing up the search bar hid the freaking
screen, you could no longer watch the action. The screen-in-screen only worked
when the search results came up, but the whole point of screen-in-screen is to
not miss a second.

2) Transitions... where are they? Every screen was a surprise, it just
obliterated the prior screen entirely and suddenly. If you were watching the
action and accidentally touched a button you could miss your team scoring a
goal... transitions help with this, as does opacity. It also gives it a deeper
more tactile feel and a sense of quality.

3) Web browser on a TV. That's it? The font rendering looks terrible on the
TV, none of it appeared to be readable which I hope is just the video of the
presentation.

4) Where are the apps? Any apps would do? But more specifically things like:

4a) twitter for TV. Imagine watching a game and having tweets of a hashtag
search appear live around a chosen space on the screen (overlay) or to reduce
the screen (screen-in-screen, but the main screen at 80%) and a list of tweets
on the right. Immediate awareness of all your mates watching the game
elsewhere... an extended social experience based on shared viewing.

4b) home dashboard. Imagine the TV having 2 stand-by states, one being a home
dashboard in which the screen goes into a low-power screen saver type state
(utilising a low-power palette for the device and dimly lit) and on this
dashboard information from which appliances are on and using power, where your
family members are (via Latitude), what you have in the fridge and cupboards
and some suggested recipes, the weather for the next 6 hours, local transport
information, your unread email counts, google voice, shit... throw in Skype
and use a high def web cam built into the TV so that full room video
conferencing has arrived for home use.

And what did they present? Chrome browser within a TV at a touch of a button
and the most primitive screen-in-screen I think I've ever seen.

I'm just, argh! Google, FFS! Hire me and let me run riot in doing the right
thing here, this is an idea whose time has come and right now you deserve to
be beaten to the post because the offering is under-whelming and doesn't yet
offer anything that having an XBox, PS3, Apple TV or even just a bog standard
media centre cannot offer.

Heh, enough of the rant. I'm just passionate about the potential here and was
ready to be blown away. I hope the finished product leaps on from this and
blows me away.

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ZeroGravitas
For 4) she did say they'd have an App store, I think she actually said Android
App store, so I'd imagine all your app requests are likely.

~~~
buro9
I suspect they're thinking that apps are just apps and that games for the
phone are good for the telly.

But without details, we just don't know. I'd rather see segmentation and
cross-over of apps by device. A twitter TV app as I've described is silly on
the phone, and a real time navigation app doesn't make the greatest sense on
the TV (unless someone wants to do a fly-by of a potential holiday destination
using street view).

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alanh
"Soon, you won't want to buy a TV without a browser." Hello, WebTV of 1995…

Love the browser demo; you can’t read a single word shown on-screen. Massive
UI fail in trusting normal websites to be TV-friendly! This is why AppleTV has
had its _own_ YouTube browser for years now. Heck, the Google TV demonstrator
has to manually start fullscreen mode on YouTube. She mentions LeanBack as an
alternative UI, and describes it as "intuitive." Have you tried it? I have. I
couldn’t figure it out. It is exactly the opposite of intuitive.

 _Edit:_ Irrelevant comment: The demo starts with _Cloudy With a Chance of
Meatballs,_ a terrible movie based off a great book? Interesting Google chose
an antithesis of (Jobs-founded) Pixar for their demo.

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lukesandberg
huh, I thought that Cloudy with a chance of meatballs was awesome. seeing the
clip made me want to watch it again.

true, it had little to do with the book, but i don't fault it for that.

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ZeroGravitas
Seems to be getting a tough reception here. Seemed pretty good to me,
basically delivering various things that I geeked up myself with an Acer Revo
running Ubuntu and XBMC, but with vastly easier setup, a better interface, and
better integration with US cable TV and DVRs.

The key elements they've got right as I see it is that it's based on HDMI
passthrough, so you're not switching between HDMI (or other) inputs and back
again which is a major stumbling block for my family, particularly as we
control the cable with a remote that can change the TV volume but nothing
else. With Google the picture slideshows, last.fm etc. just appear on top of
the standard video signal and they appear to have IR blasters to pass through
all kinds of controls to other devices, which is hacky but necessary unless
you want to buy the entire ecosystem from your cable provider.

They're also building it into TVs and Blu-Ray players, which means one less
control (and box) to worry about. Integration with iPhones/Android is
something that geeks already do to various degrees (e.g. setting recordings
while out and about, flicking through or searching your video library on your
phone) but it's good to have it built in from the start, particularly with
voice activation for finding that rarely used channel.

On the other hand searching the web while watching a program is something I do
right now with my iPhone or netbook, so I don't really see the benefit of
that, but then it kind of comes for free so why not?

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zdw
So, it's basically Chrome OS glued to a TV tuner with quick access to a search
bar.

Count me not impressed. Similar (and more featureful) stuff has been around in
other OSS projects like MythTV and XBMC for years at this point.

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lukesandberg
every time ive thought about setting up mythtv, i never did because i knew it
would take me hours, it would cost money and time to find the right tuner
cards, and there would be no particular guarantee that i could actually get it
to all work in the end.

Are there many non-techie users of XBMC/MythTV?

And anyway, ideas are worthless if execution is poor. if google creates an
integrated seemless product then it doesn't really matter if XBMC has been
doing it for 10 years or not. Its like saying that the (original) iPhone would
be useless because other phones had had browsers/email/whatever for years.
Apple executed better, thats all that mattered

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jsz0
I don't really see the use case for this. Doesn't everyone inclined to want
these features have a laptop/tablet/SmartPhone within arms reach when they sit
on the couch and watch TV? I can't imagine watching a video with friends and
using the TV to search for something while making the video 1/8th size in the
corner. Assuming I did want to browse Flickr on my TV I would want a TV
friendly UI -- not the Flickr website. It makes sense to have a set top with
tight integration with other devices for control, TV-centric apps make sense
if you can figure out a non-clunky control method. Another demo I saw included
setting up an IR blaster to a cable box with video inputs. No one wants to do
that. That's exactly why Windows MCE was a failure. At this early stage Google
TV doesn't seem to have moved far enough away from being an Android based
HTPC. Some people undoubtably want that but I'm not sure it's a mainstream
thing.

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melvinram
The current version doesn't feel too impressive though I'm sure the pie is big
enough that improvement will happen quickly with big investments being made
rapidly. The vision is inspiring. The implementation needs work.

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enjo
A year ago my wife and I cut the cord. We gave up cable and switched to a
media PC with Hulu and Streaming Netflix as our primary sources. It's been a
great change for us (particularly with Hulu+), but I do think Google TV is
pretty hopelessly misguided.

It seems like a lot of folks are convinced there is a lot of great TV out
there on the Internet and it's just a matter of finding it. That doesn't
really seem to be true to me. Most quality content is rather short. Mr Deity
and the like aren't really "curl up on the couch" TV. I don't want to surf, I
want to be passively entertained. That means in half-hour chunks with high
production values. You know, like the Networks tend to create.

For that you seem to have three real options:

1\. Hulu 2\. Netflix 3\. Torrents

I'm not really into the hassle and dubious legal status of #3... but past that
what's the point? Until there are folks truly producing great content,
discoverability really isn't the issue is it? Yet isn't that what Google is
trying to solve here? I just don't really get it.

~~~
rb2k_
It's nice to see how the "three real options" break down in Germany.

Hulu: nope

Netflix: nope

Torrents: works

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guelo
Well, why are german people watching american content? Why don't the german
language producers create there own version of hulu?

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rb2k_
Because the US spends so much money on production value that we can't compete
and just dub stuff. While these dubs are really high quality, I personally
find awful to watch them since a lot of jokes or puns get lost in translation
:(

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Ravir
Can't wait for Adblock for TV...

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bemmu
This doesn't make me feel like "I want that".

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Wildweasal
Part of the reason for this is certainly the fact that the product itself is
not particularly extraordinary.

The other part is that she is no Steve Jobs. Marketing, and more specifically
_believing_ in your product, makes all the difference.

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Devilboy
Even Jobs is having a tough time selling Apple TV

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Estragon
Money quote from Schmidt's postscript: "Instead of wasting time watching
television, you can waste time watching the internet!"

