Google TV

[IronWolf]

More details coming out on Google TV:

Quick Tour - Google TV

I am intrigued by this. I have not seen the pricing for the hardware, but if it is reasonable it might just take off. You can do Netflix as well as Amazon's On Demand thing.

 

[Relique du Madde]

I support Google's full scale assult against Apple TV.

 

[Janx]

I can do a chunk of that with my PS3, Xbox, PSP and video cable, and my U-Verse DVD.

I'm all in favor of:
any device with a screen and internet access should have a web browser
any device that can reduce the techno-clutter and do the same functionality
any device that can effectively cut down my monthly bill.
The TV is often the largets monitor in the house, therefore it is ideal as a central cool gadget interface.


That said, my PS3 and 360 can both do NetFlix. The PS3 has a web-browser, I've used it now and then. It can do youtube.

But I don't watch that much youtube. I watch TV, and a fair amount of it specific shows I DVR. I don't channel surf, as I've got enough backlog of shows I regularly watch on my DVR. I'm not a fan of paying for shows from iTunes or Hulu that I want to watch that were broadcast for free, despite the fact that to get signal in Houston, I had to get cable and am in fact paying for free TV shows.

Everytime my DVR has gone out, I've gone out to the network's website (except for CBS, they're jerks), and if I remember to check in time, watched the show on my laptop connected to my TV. So it's possible, though not convenient to do most of it over the web.

Nor am I a fan of illegally torrenting videos, as you're one FBI raid away from bankruptcy. All it takes is for somebody to call in a claim that you've got child pornography on your PC (which is now a common divorce-war tactic).

So, for me, the ideal device would let me fire my cable TV box, and let me easily get the shows I want to watch for legal and free or cheaper than what I pay per month. If I could do that on my PS3 or xbox (because I already own them), I'd be set. I think NetFlix is in the best position to deliver this, as they are a software solution on MANY devices, rather than 1 specific device.

Thus I think AppleTV and GoogleTV won't gain widespread usage. The xbox stands in a better place to grab that marketshare.

 

[Relique du Madde]

I'm not sure about apple tv not getting wide spread usage. There are enought apple fanatics out there that would buy it because its apple and since theythink its "rebelious." Problem is I feel that there is something insidious about appletv being essentially itunes and safari hooked to a hard drive but with with hdmi and av cables. It sort of neglects the fact that people have found thirdparty ways of connecting lap tops and computers to cable boxes for years.

 

[faith1806]

i never heard of google TV before. with the fast development of technology, i hope that google tv will have a brilliant future,lol

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Problem is I feel that there is something insidious about appletv being essentially itunes and safari hooked to a hard drive but with with hdmi and av cables.

That is not what Apple TV is.

• There is no Safari in it.
• There is no hard drive either, it has 8GB of flash to buffer rentals from the internet and streams from PCs.
• There is only HDMI and optical audio.

As Red Box is not trying to be Blockbuster, Apple TV is not trying to be a media center PC. It doesn't even want to try. Which is not to say there aren't people out there who want that. Apple TV is about doing a simple thing and cheaply. Apple TV, in its current version, is 100% about streaming content. What else can it do with 8GB of flash storage? Streaming HD rentals, stream iTunes content from PCs, and with iOS 4.2 it can stream over AirPlay from iOS 4.2 devices. People with the beta of iOS 4.2 have reported some 3rd party apps that stream video have AirPlay buttons appearing in the interfaces. Maybe some enterprising Android developers can find a way to stream from Android devices to an Apple TV?

For a lot of people dropping $99 to add this function to a home media center is practically an impulse buy.

As a tangent: I don't want to browse the internet on my TV screen. Have you tried sitting and watching someone else browse the web? It's not entertaining and I won't much less sit on a couch with popcorn to do it. I'll go so far as to say watching someone else browse the web might be an experience used for torture in hell.

 

[Janx]

On the topic of Web Browser on TV, there's 2 useful usage patterns:

a) so I can check things I need to check quickly (I can boot my PS3 and check my bank balance faster than I can boot my PC to do the same). Personal surfing, is as Eric says, not for spectators.

b) so I can browse to Hulu or nbc.com, or abc.com to watch a TV show from the last week or so that my DVR missed. itunes would charge me a rental for that. Or I'd need to be able to plug my laptop into my TV (not everybody has the right stuff for that)

I think B is a compelling enough reason. However, I also think that NetFlix's Instant stuff is getting closer to solving it, without specific hardware. NBC is already partnering with them to license all their TV shows.

That's sort of the product purpose flaw of the AppleTV. If you have a PS3 or 360, you can do all that stuff now.

Both of my systems will stream music and videos off a PC (just enable it in Media Player, or run a 3rd party app). They will also stream it off of modern NAS's like my DLink 3-2-1 NAS via the DNA standard. My NAS will even act as an iTunes server, though I disabled that. It was really easy to setup, as both consoles scanned my network for devices and found my NAS by name.

Other than buying something from iTunes on your TV and then playing it, I can pretty much do the same thing from my PC, to enable viewing it.

I can also use NetFlix on both game consoles, so as Netflix expands its catalog (i.e. more recent shows) I'm good to go.

So it still comes down to, what is the Apple TV good for? Sure, it's $100. But whats the probability that somebody who would buy it wouldn't already have a 360 or PS3? because the demographic is pretty similar.

Personally, I think people need help consolidating their media. Most households end up with 1 iTunes library per PC, and end up getting confused about optimizing it all so they can share purchases. Apple's made some in-roads on that, but it's still confusing.

People also don't really know how to backup their stuff. it ultimately comes down to once you get a huge media library, its too big to burn to CD. It would be more practical if they had a truly cheap RAID 1 NAS that pretty much kept it running all the time.

The problem is, most folks don't know how to manage their home IT infrastructure. So they don't know to buy any of this stuff, let alone set it up, and migrate all their iTunes libraries to it.

I think this is where cloud computing is trying to build its niche. Basically by not putting your crap on your PC, you get the protection of being managed by somebody else. if the Media Vault thing takes off, then you're looking at people's computers only caching copies of the media they recently used, but otherwise, their registered stuff is stored in a central cloud.

then AppleTV may have some use. But then the PS3 and 360 will get a firmware update and do the same thing. the world is not like it used to be. What features you get today are a subset of the features that same box will have next year.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

However, I also think that NetFlix's Instant stuff is getting closer to solving it, without specific hardware. NBC is already partnering with them to license all their TV shows.

That's sort of the product purpose flaw of the AppleTV. If you have a PS3 or 360, you can do all that stuff now.

You keep bringing up Netflix monthly accounts, right, Apple TV streams Netflix like everything else but how delayed is content showing up in Netflix.

If you don't have a Netflix monthly account Apple TV still lets you rent TV episodes 99¢, commercial free, a piece from a few networks so far that includes ABC, Fox, and BBC America the day after it airs.

I think you are deluding yourself if you think NAS as media servers to anything are going to become mainstream.

So it still comes down to, what is the Apple TV good for?

I already posted what it's good for. A dirt simple $99 rental and media streaming box.

Plus it the size of some smartphones (so there is easy room for it at the home entertainment center), and uses less electritity than a tenth of a 60w lightbulbs.

 

[IronWolf]

You keep bringing up Netflix monthly accounts, right, Apple TV streams Netflix like everything else but how delayed is content showing up in Netflix.

If you don't have a Netflix monthly account Apple TV still lets you rent TV episodes 99¢, commercial free, a piece from a few networks so far that includes ABC, Fox, and BBC America the day after it airs.

I haven't found the pricing model of the 99¢ TV episode rental attractive at all. I much prefer the Netflix pricing model of $9 a month and I can stream anything they have available and they'll send me a DVD of anything they have available in the snail mail to help make up for things I can't stream. It is much more cost effective for me to go that route.

Now I know that is entirely subjective and others don't think anything of the 99¢ rental, I know I have friends that thought that was a great deal. Me? I'm patient, I don't need to see a show right away and can wait until it comes out later. Nearly all the great Showtime series we watch are done well after the season is over and that doesn't bother me - I know that would drive other people nuts to wait that long.

 

[Janx]

On NAS's, my point was quite the opposite. While a NAS is technically the "right" solution, the consumer can't fathom it. The consumer needs iTunes to detect and merge all libraries in a household, and cloudify them. That means no more single-download of a song, so that if something goes wrong, the user can re-get their song. it means NOT having to backup their library manually, for all intents and purposes. What really goes on under the hood, would be Apple magic.


My point about NetFlix and game consoles is that they are already in position in a large number of households. They do access iTunes on people's PCs to some extent (from what i can tell, I don't directly use that feature).

Therefore, AppleTV, though cheaper than a PS3/360, has a challenge. Its feature set has too much overlap. Odds are good, people like me are convincing normal people what doo-dad to buy to do cool TV stuff. While I wouldn't rule out AppleTV, if the person has gamers in the house, I'd recommend using a game console to do all that, and not an AppleTV.

NetFlix and iTunes are in a race, as far as video media goes. Both are signing up content suppliers. $9 a month, versus $1 a show. if Netflix grows its "recent" library more, or shrinks the time from broadcast to available to stream, netFlix is inherently a cheaper deal.

Consider True Blood. We watch it off the DVR (sometimes as its recording) or the next day. Then a few days to weeks later, one of my wife's friends comes over to watch it because they don't have HBO. In iTunes, that's a double RENTAL. If NetFlix had it, it would be part of the $9 a month, effectively unlimited usage.


I'm not saying NetFlix is there yet, but they are signing deals with NBC to release ALL of their TV shows. And NetFlix is available on all the latest consoles (and now many smartphones). They are part of an alternative product solution to AppleTV.

Almost all of my friends (who are adults in their 30s) have modern game consoles hooked up to the internet. Most of them even have NetFlix.

The audience of potential customers interested in streaming media is more likely to own a game console that is hooked up to the internet than not. That doesn't mean there's not non-gamers for whom an AppleTV would solve a problem. It's just means that group of people is smaller. That means less sales. Which, thus far, the low sales of Apple TV support that hypothesis (the counter to that is Apple did not really promote the earlier AppleTV productline).

Thats my theory. I think NetFlix will be a better deal to replace my cable subscription. I suspect I won't be able to get everything via NetFlix, but I bet I can watch stuff from the iTunes store on one of my game consoles pretty easily and legally. And you can bet, I'll advise everyone else of that who's interested.

Apple will then only sell to people too clueless to realize they already own the solution at home, or to people who just gotta have the latest doodad, regardless if they actually need it.

I think the gTV will be the same thing. While it will technically have more features, how many of them do you need?