Google's World Conquest Continues, Google TV Demoed
Google, Google, Google. Seems everywhere you turn these days you hear the company name, from their core business Internet search to web browsers, operating systems, web applications, smart phones and now, TV.
The guys over at Stuff We Like have posted a video demonstration of Google TV that was recorded at Comic Con 2010. It shows a demo of Google TV by two Google engineers.
Google TV
Google TV combines the TV, DVR recordings and the Internet in a seamless experience. It comes as a set top box, and will also be included in some TVs directly.
One of the strongest features of Google TV is its search capabilities that allows the user to find channels, individual shows and recordings faster.
Google TV comes with a built-in Chrome web browser, which supports everything that the computer version does. If it works in the normal Chrome browser, it will work on Google TV as well.
This opens a slew of new options that most set top boxes and TVs do not offer, like playing Flash games, accessing websites like Facebook, watching YouTube videos, or checking life stats or chatting with your buddies while watching the latest game of your favorite team.
Compatibility with the web also means that Google TV will offer access to multimedia contents like music, photos, favorite games and other forms of entertainment or information available on the Internet these days.
Google TV runs on the Android platform, and will integrat Google Chrome and Adobe's Flash Player. The idea is to provide manufacturers with a flexible operating system that they can not only add to their TVs, but also Blu-Ray players, DVD players, gaming systems and other set top boxes.
Since it is based on Android, Google TV is able to run any Android app, providing that it does not rely on phone hardware to run.
All Google TV devices will come with a remote that makes use of a QWERTY keyboard, and it is furthermore possible to use an Android phone as a remote as well. It is likely that different types of input devices will become available eventually, from bare bones systems to full keyboards.
Engadget posted some of the hardware stats a while ago:
Google's laid out a series of baseline hardware specifications for the Google TV platform, which every piece of gear will share. The heart of the system is the Intel Atom CE4100, which launched at IDF last year. It's an Atom-based SoC with some additional silicon for decoding dual 1080p video stream, MPEG-4 support, and 3D graphics capabilities. That's joined by some custom DSPs, and things like WiFi, HDMI, and Bluetooth are all required.
Sony seems to be the first TV manufacturer to bring out a Google TV later this year. It will be interesting to see how effective this is in real life, how much it costs, and when it will become available in other countries than the US.
