

Google TV: Now faster and easier - antr
http://googletv.blogspot.com/2012/11/google-tv-now-faster-and-easier.html

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baggachipz
I'll be the lonely voice here who says this: Google TV is the least worst
option in a sea of mediocrity. I still use a Logitech Revue (conspicuously
absent from the updated products list, once again) and I've yet to find any
better platform. There's one simple reason for this: It goes in between a
content feed (such as cable or antenna) and your tv. In that way, it can
control content on my network, the streaming services, AND live tv or DVR
shows. No other product that I'm aware of does that. I want one interface to
control all those things. Roku doesn't do that. Apple TV doesn't do that.
Hell, my Samsung "smart" tv doesn't do that either. Tivo? A pile of laggy
shit, and it can't stream on my network without jumping through 1000 hoops.
Also, $15 bucks a month for a program guide is highway robbery.

I'd love to not have to have a cable source for shows, but until the content
producers get their heads out of their asses, I still can't watch what I want
from the Netflix/Hulu combination. I also hate having to switch apps to use
those, but such is life it seems.

It's FAR from ideal, but it's the most polished turd I can find. It's the only
thing I know of that (barely) passes the wife test and does the things I need.

~~~
HelloMcFly
For those of us that don't feel like we need cable and only rarely watch OTA
broadcasts the ability for GoogleTV to connect to cable or an antenna isn't
very attractive. Roku's extensive list of additional channels, simplicity, and
compactness are much more appealing.

~~~
fjarlq
Roku doesn't support Youtube... that was a deal breaker for me.

~~~
andybak
Roku also didn't use to support local media browsing. I know it does now - is
it any good at it? (at least for video content this was one of Boxee's
strengths)

Also - how is Roku in terms of a 3rd-party app ecosystem? That is another
essential in my books.

~~~
chaostheory
It does, but not well. You'll have to resort to Plex.

Roku has a better app ecosystem than Google TV, more video channels in
particular.

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saljam
When I saw that video I immediately thought of what Sussman said about Haskell
a year or so ago. “Haskell is the most advanced of the obsolete programming
languages!” [1] I think Google TV is the most advanced form of an obsolete
medium.

I don't have a TV, and all of my friends who do rarely use theirs. Added
together, I'd say I watch about an hour a fortnight of TV material. And that's
mostly on my phone or computer's screen.

This might be a generation thing. With tablets and smartphones everywhere I
don't feel I'm missing out. On the other hand, my father _needs_ the constant
babble of the TV. It could also be that my circles and I are outliers against
the norm, but I very much doubt it.

[1] [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-
How-T...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-To-
Compute)

~~~
myko
Are you and your friends not terribly interested in sports? It's hard to catch
CFB games on my tablet or PC (at least legally and with good quality, live).

This is probably the main reason my wife and I still use our TV regularly.

~~~
saljam
Ha. That's a good point. I don't really have much interest in spectator
sports. Which brings another point to mind; I found following TdF on the web
with all the interactive stats easily accessible very enjoyable. It's a shame
there wasn't much live video coverage.

Then again, I'm not really the man to talk about sports.

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andybak
Why on earth is Google TV separate from Android?

Why is the only Google TV device available in the UK a £200 Sony box when you
can get pretty capable Android Media Center Boxes for a third or even a
quarter of that price? (MK802 etc.)

Why is nobody attacking this space with any gusto? Boxee, Roku, Apple TV,
Google TV, YouView, Windows MCE and various no-hope proprietary platforms
(Samsung - you'll never build a platform anyone wants to build on. Please give
up).

Will someone sort this out? We need a decent open Smart TV ecosystem.

~~~
mikeryan
_Why on earth is Google TV separate from Android?_

I'm not sure I understand the question, GoogleTV is an application layer on
top of Android that addresses the TV. Its still Android underneath and you can
still build Android apps for it.

I can't answer the UK pricing model but in the US you can get the Vizio Co-
Star for $99. All the OTT Boxes have come to Roku's realization that these
boxes have to be under $100 so now you've got GoogleTV and Boxee at the $99
price point.

 _Why is nobody attacking this space with any gusto? Boxee, Roku, Apple TV,
Google TV, YouView, Windows MCE and various no-hope proprietary platforms_

There's a lot of folks attacking this space, most of them the CE providers
themselves who don't see the need to use a 3rd party platform

 _Samsung - you'll never build a platform anyone wants to build on_

This isn't true. I say this as someone who builds apps for these platforms
this space is crazy busy. Also while it looks like it from the outside,
LG/Samsung/Panasonic/Boxee's "App Platforms" are really just HTML browsers.
They're not super secret propietary browser they're all pretty modern webkit
implementations (Samsung's is Webkit as of 2012) and you can pretty much write
a single app that runs on most of these "proprietary platforms" with very
little differences between platforms. There's actually a "Smart TV Alliance"
with some CE providers trying to standardize the functionality that doesn't
map to CE-HTML or another spec (usually access to Hardware API's like channel
changes or volume).

<http://www.smarttv-alliance.org/>

~~~
andybak
> _Why on earth is Google TV separate from Android?_

> I'm not sure I understand the question, GoogleTV is an application layer on
> top of Android that addresses the TV. Its still Android underneath and you
> can still build Android apps for it.

Then why can't I run it on any Android device with a HDMI socket? I'd have
several Google TVs already if that was possible.

There's seems to be a more restricted culture around Google TV. The source
code isn't available so there's no no-name boxes from small OEMs to stir up
the low-end of the market. (Although you could argue that they can stick to
vanilla Android but that won't help the platform reach or brand-recognition of
Google TV)

I agree about the price-point but who apart from Vizio is producing a $99 box?
And as I said - the only device available in the UK is the £200 ($320) Sony
box.

Didn't know about the Smart TV Alliance. The only smart TV I played with was a
Samsung TV about a year ago and that was sluggish and underpowered. However:

"Smart TV Alliance supported products are:

    
    
        Philips Smart TVs
        LG Smart TVs

"

That's not looking like an ecosystem. Is it likely to grow beyond those two?
How about the small companies? Where are the cheap compatible set-top boxes?
If you can make a half-decent Android tablet for $70 then we should be seeing
one of these platforms taking off.

[Also - What does 'CE' stand for?]

~~~
saurik
> Then why can't I run it on any Android device with a HDMI socket? I'd have
> several Google TVs already if that was possible.

A simple answer for this is "it is compiled for x86, as the reference platform
for a Google TV is an Intel CE4100" (and thereby, if you stole the software
off of an existing unit, you would not be able to run it on the numerous ARM
Android devices that are out there).

> There's seems to be a more restricted culture around Google TV. The source
> code isn't available so there's no no-name boxes from small OEMs to stir up
> the low-end of the market.

This, however, is the real issue underlying your complaints. As the GoogleTV
at some level relies on not pissing off content providers whether directly or
indirectly (if nothing else, to keep it from being used to do DHCP stripping,
but it obviously goes much deeper than that), it is going to be a closed
platform; that's simply the game you have to play to be in this space.

~~~
andybak
> A simple answer for this is "it is compiled for x86, as the reference
> platform for a Google TV is an Intel CE4100"

I thought they were switching to ARM or has that not happened yet?

> As the GoogleTV at some level relies on not pissing off content providers

Once again they hold back an entire industry to prevent piracy whilst utterly
failing to do so by any measure.

~~~
saurik
> I thought they were switching to ARM or has that not happened yet?

This seems to have actually already happened (I didn't actually get any of the
new hardware released after this year's Google I/O; I was mostly interested in
this the prior year, when it seemed like it might be popular). You probably
then actually _can_ just run it on another device, but it would involve
stealing the software off of an existing unit.

------
chaostheory
I've been too busy to comment lately, but I'll make this an exception since I
hate this product so much. Stay away from these products unless you're
developing for it.

1) I'm not sure what Google did, but with Google TV a device with 1 GB of ram
is no longer more than enough. I feel that it needs double the ram to run
well. Unfortunately no Google TV to my knowledge has 2 GB or more of ram.
Given this, I really doubt the extra new features will work well since the
hardware isn't up to par. It probably just has more reasons to lock up and
freeze more often.

2) This is probable the only device where Netflix doesn't work well. Nearly
every time you start Netflix, it'll fail to connect and it's pretty often when
it fails to connect to Netflix when you try to play a movie. For a while even
Youtube of all things didn't work well.

3) There are "apps" that are simply bookmarks to web pages.

4) None of the set top Google TV boxes come with a tuner / cable decoder,
necessitating a separate box if you want to watch cable or over the air TV;
which kills the entire point of it when the cable box has a better experience.

The list just goes on. This is just one really horrible set of products.

Yes, we have installed the updates as they become available.

~~~
kaolinite
Have you tried the Apple TV? I'd be interested how it compares as I have been
quite unsatisfied with it. It's not as seamless as I'd hoped and often has the
same issues you mention with Netflix (and also connection issues with iTunes).

~~~
chaostheory
Even Apple TV is less annoying. Roku is far from perfect and I have my gripes
with it, but in my mind it's the best.

About the only thing I haven't tried is Boxee.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Boxee gave up on the Boxee Box (quite literally abandoned it and their
customers) and is now doing a regular TV DVR box.

~~~
astral303
My friend had a Boxee Box and it was UNSTAAABLE. I saw it freeze up or restart
way too many times. Unacceptable.

~~~
andybak
I have mixed feelings about the Boxee but it rarely freezes for me.

It's got a killer interface. Handles local video extremely well. It used to
have a decent ecosystem but Boxee seem to have pivoted away from that plan.

It never had the content providers - at least in the UK. We never got Lovefilm
or Netflix. BBC iPlayer didn't work for months and 4od came and went then came
back.

To woo the content providers that we never got Boxee shut off the hackability
and killed a growing enthusiast and developer scene.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
> Handles local video extremely well.

Movies constantly buffer for me with SMB. Over Boxee Media Manager it doesn't
buffer, but does take longer to initially load.

------
josephlord
[http://www.v-net.tv/what-is-wrong-with-connected-tv-by-
the-b...](http://www.v-net.tv/what-is-wrong-with-connected-tv-by-the-bbc/)

Related story although somewhat unfair in my view because it is request
focussed and I know I jump around between content more on tablet/phone than on
TV. Only a little bit is the sluggish UI but more that my mode of watching and
my intention is different when watching on TV. I want to watch not interact.

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tangue
Apple has started something interesting with the Remote App, and I hope Google
TV will push this forward.

From what I'm seeing now it looks more like a VCR[1] with an Android UI, but I
really believe in the tablet/tv combo. IMHO multitasking is a key to a good
connected TV experience.

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/tv/android/docs/gtv_android_pa...](https://developers.google.com/tv/android/docs/gtv_android_patterns)

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ImprovedSilence
Does anyone here have thoughts/experiences with Apple TV. I think it looks
like quite a simple product compared with the Google TV stuff..?

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holychiz
how about putting a search function for local files on home network? There's
too many steps currently.

