Google TV brings browsing to television
informitv’s William Cooper on Google TV – the endless possibilities and the potential problems…
Google TV is due to launch in America in the autumn and worldwide in 2011. Eric Schmidt, the chairman and chief executive of Google gave a keynote presentation featuring a live demonstration at the IFA technology trade fair in Berlin to showcase Google TV.
Asked whether television was actually a passive experience, the Google executive responded by joking: “Once you have Google Television you’re not going to be passive, you’re going to be very, very busy. It’s going to ruin your evening. That’s our strategy.”
It seems a strange selling point to promote the plan to take on television with a new interface, but Google is convinced that adding a browser and a search box will transform the medium.
Bringing the web to television has been tried before and it did not work well, but now screens are high definition and the internet can deliver high-definition video.
“All of a sudden, we can combine the two together,” said Eric Schmidt, referring to combining television and a web browser. “It will be possible to programme your television to do what you’ve always wanted it to do, rather than just yelling at it, which is what most people do.”
In fact it may even be possible to control the television by yelling at it, with the help of voice control and an Android mobile phone. “These are things that were the stuff of science fiction a few years ago and now they’re very, very real.”
Brittany Bohnet, a product marketing manager at Google, gave a live demonstration using a satellite set top box and a generic development box and keyboard. “Soon, you’re never going to want to buy a TV without an internet browser,” she predicted.
For Google, that means a search box overlay that links to a full-screen browser. “The web just became an extension of my TV.”
As an example, she showed a search for Star Trek providing links to episodes on television, movies available on demand and related web sites. That sounds great for goal orientated searching, but whether that is how most people will select their viewing is another matter.
Browsing television will no longer be confined to flicking through channels looking for something to watch. If viewers know what they want they will be able to find it. The problem may be knowing what they want to watch…
Read more at informitv.com
© informitv 2010. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.