Chromecast

Chromecast is a digital media streaming adapter developed by Google. The device plays audio/video content on a high-definition television by streaming it via Wi-Fi from the Internet or local network. Users select the media to play on their television from the Google Chrome web browser on a personal computer or from a supported app on their mobile device.

Tomorrow first thing is the morning is a talk at Code Camp by Kevin Nilson
http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Session/2013/chromecast

Logitech Calls Google TV a 'Big Mistake'

You only get one shot with a hardware vendor like this.  Most people *besides Microsoft* can't get away with burning hardware vendors.

Someday Google may learn about Memetics and it's not about matching technical specifications and requirments.
You'd think they would because they are in a key position and have no idea how to capitalize on it.



From Slashdot:

"Logitech CEO Guerrino De Luca spoke bluntly about Google TV yesterday, referring to it as a 'beta' product and saying that relying on it for the Revue set-top boxes was a mistake. Logitech will stop production of the Revue, and plans to implement significant price cuts to get rid of their remaining inventory. 'He said there are "no plans to introduce another box to replace Revue." Further, he predicted that the "grandchild of Google TV" might succeed but not the current product. For now, that leaves Sony televisions with the Google software for people looking for the Google TV experience.'"

What Makes a Smart TV Smart?

From Wired.com   Multiple Intelligences: What Makes a Smart TV Smart?

The new Android Market for Google TV apps. Image via Google.

I have a theory about smart TVs. We still don’t really know what makes them “smart.”

Right now, the minimal definition of a smart TV is a connection to the internet. This is what we’ve been working with for a few years now, and it hasn’t gotten us very far.

If you look back just a few years, we had the same problem with smartphones. We thought we knew what made them smart: e-mail and keyboards. Apple’s iPhone lit the fuse that blew that up: Now, it’s touchscreens and app stores as far as the eye can see.

Google’s new take on the smart TV suggests Google thinks the TV should be like a 2011 smartphone. Lots of applications that put web services and web video on your TV screen.

It’s easy to see why Google’s taken this approach. By any measure, Android smartphones have been a huge success. And Google TV’s first take, which was based on Google’s core business in search, didn’t really take with customers or television networks very much at all.

But I don’t think smartphones are a terrific model for smart TVs. It’s not the apps; Android and its development community are flexible enough, and there are plenty of video applications already to make an object like that fairly compelling.

These are the two biggest and best-established problems with porting the smartphone model over to televisions:

1. Smartphones are basically mobile and self-contained. This means that the devices are primarily used solo, so manufacturers put as many capabilities as possible into them: web, media, games, productivity. Meanwhile, television sets are basically static and networked. They stay in one place and have to interface with a lot of other machines, from remote controls to cable boxes and gaming or media consoles.
2. These days, smartphones are high volume and relatively disposable devices. Users change over devices every few years, and manufacturers sell a lot of them. TVs aren’t like that. Horace Dediu wrote a post showing that the TV market (smart and non-smart) is a fraction of the smartphone market, and even smaller than the tablet market. We’re basically saturated with big screens.

Then again, the smartphone market once wasn’t very big either. What would have to happen is probably a redefinition of iPhone proportions.

This week, Nick Bilton stirred the smart TV pot in the tech blogosphere. Bilton’s anonymous Apple sources confirmed long-standing rumors of Apple’s plans to pull off a redefinition of smart TVs similar to its redefinition of smartphones.

Walter Isaacson’s new biography had already quoted Jobs saying “I’ve finally cracked it!” to the problem of smart TVs. Bilton’s primary addition was a piece we’d already speculated on, that the new Apple smart TV would use Siri’s voice-driven AI as the primary interface. This, says Bilton, is what Jobs meant: not just an all-in-one integrated TV, but a new interface.

However, Bilton also says the device won’t be coming any time soon; high-quality display costs need to keep falling before Apple can make a powerful AI-computer-inside-a-TV set affordable. Meanwhile, we’ve got plenty of set-top boxes (including Apple’s) and Google’s rebooted TV now, or in the next week or so.

It’s also still a picture of the future of television that basically says an Apple TV (or iTV) will be a lot like Apple’s iPhone 4S. It says the model for the smart TV is the smartphone — just Apple’s version, not Google’s.

Maybe a combination of a voice/touch interface, AI command and search functions, cloud storage, and a high-quality audio-video experience are enough. When I write it all down, it sounds pretty good. I’m sure Apple could sell TV sets like that at generous margins and turn them into a decent business.

It’s not really a breakthrough, though. With Xbox, Kinect and WinPhone, Microsoft already has voice, gesture and cloud components contributing to the living room experience. It doesn’t really change the fundamental economics of the television market, both in the number of sets sold each year and in the convoluted nature of the business relationships between cable providers, channels, content creators, software developers and so forth. Does Siri have a solution for that?

One solution proposed by John Hermann earlier this year is to stop trying to make TVs so smart, and just make them really good screens, dumb monitors for whatever content you want to throw onto them. But that doesn’t solve the problem of cable clutter and disintegrated services. It also doesn’t recognize that the future of every electronic device is most likely a networked one.

The real problem is that we’ve been thinking about televisions in terms of the wrong networks, whether wired speakers and set-top boxes, or smartphone-style apps that fetch Netflix and YouTube from the web.

I don’t see a future for the television where it becomes a stand-alone device, a unique experience fully contained in one box. I don’t think that’s the smartphone’s future either. The television, like the personal computer, will always have to be able to communicate with multiple devices, whether it’s doing that wired or wirelessly, on a local network or up in the cloud.

The smart TV of the future connects with my smartphone, my tablet, my laptop and my e-reader, as well as my refrigerator, my thermostat. Because it’s stationary and has the most screen real estate, it partially replaces the personal computer as the digital hub of the household, just as the smartphone replaces the PC as the digital hub for the individual.

Ultimately, it’s connections, not the internet or a lack of cables, that will make both smartphones and especially smart TVs smarter. In the process, it will reinvent our concept of what personal computing is, has been and ought to become. That’s what we’re waiting for.

Google, Motorola and the next big play, TV.

From Google CEO Page Speaks at Zeitgeist Conference

When asked whether Google was interested in Motorola’s production of cable set-top boxes as a launching pad into people’s television screens, Larry Page said “certainly that’s something we considered, yes.”

Google has launched a service called Google TV that is built into cable set-top boxes or new TVs and lets people simultaneously search for Web video and TV programs to watch, but the service has had relatively slow uptake in the market.

When Page was asked what was the No. 1 threat to Google, he said “Google.” Google Chairman Eric Schmidt explained that “problems of companies at Google’s scale are internal.”

Page said many large companies “tend to slow decision-making and that tends to be tragic.” He previously said he became CEO in April in order to speed up decision-making at the company.

Also read:
With Motorola, Google TV just got a huge shot in the arm
Can Google Fix the Cable Box?
Google TV: The Future of Interactive Television?

Can Google Fix the Cable Box?

From Slashdot:

"In purchasing Motorola Mobility, Slate's Farhad Manjoo reports that Google will also come into possession of one the nation's biggest suppliers of set-top boxes. So, can Google work some of its do-no-evil magic on the loathsome cable box? Don't bet on it, says Manjoo. For one thing, there's no evidence that Google would be very good at remaking the set-top box (Google TV, anyone?). But even if Google managed to dramatically improve set-top boxes, it's doubtful that cable and satellite companies would buy in. First, they'd lose all those ridiculously lucrative cable-box rental fees. More importantly, they'd have to give up control of the main entertainment device in most homes, and with it the opportunity to slow or stymie competing sources for entertainment. After the merger, notes Manjoo, Google could get several billion dollars by selling off Motorola Mobility's set-top-box division — a much surer payday than taking on Big Cable."

With Motorola, Google TV just got a huge shot in the arm

I don't think Google leap in to hardware is a good move.

If anything I think they are overconfident in their abilities.  By competing in the hardware space they are alienating the established hardware manufacturers and will end up going it alone against the rest of the industry. 



From Wired: Did Google Just Turn Motorola Into the New Super-TiVo?



From Gigaom : With Motorola, Google TV just got a huge shot in the arm

Google’s acquisition of Motorola isn’t just about the Android mobile market. In addition to giving Google some mobile hardware capabilities and patent coverage, the purchase could also be a big boost to Google TV. But to make that happen, Google TV will need to shift its positioning from an operating system that is sold to consumers to one that will be used by a number of pay TV operators instead.

Google TV has been a flop

Introduced to much fanfare last year, the first generation of Google TV products has largely underwhelmed consumers. Logitech, which invested heavily in the OS with its Google TV Revue set-top boxes, has taken a huge hit from the lack of interest in the product. It recently slashed the price of the Revue boxes from $249 to $99. Sony has also heavily discounted its first generation of Google TV products, slashing the price of its entry-level 24″ Google TV product in half.

While the second iteration of Google TV shows a little more promise, with a more open app ecosystem and improved user interface, Google would still largely be playing catchup in the home device market. Apple has sold more than a million Apple TVs, and Roku is on pace to have more than 3 million of its streaming boxes sold by the end of the year. That’s not even counting the millions of TVs and Blu-ray players from manufacturers like Samsung, Vizio and Toshiba that all have their own app ecosystem.

Motorola adds the scale, credibility Google TV needs

Google TV will get some benefit from existing Android applications, as they can be easily ported over to TV products. But with so few actual devices sold, Google might have difficulty giving developers a reason to build TV-specific applications, especially when there are so many other TV operating systems to choose from.

That could all change, as Google just bought a very strong player in the set-top box and home devices market. According to Infonetics, Motorola Mobility was the leader in set-top box revenues last year, and was also tops in hybrid IP/QAM set-top boxes — that is, the boxes used by operators like Verizon that combine broadcast TV and over-the-top applications. By leveraging Motorola’s position with carriers, Google can better solidify its bid to expand Google TV and Android into the living room.

On the call announcing the deal this morning, Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha pointed to Motorola’s strong relationships with pay TV operators and noted there is a transition underway, as operators shift from traditional set-top boxes to IP-connected boxes. “There is great convergence between the mobile world and content that comes to the home through set-top boxes. Working with the carriers, we’ll be able to accelerate that convergence which will excite customers.”

Google TV could accelerate operators’ shift to the cloud

Many operators are using IP-based services in a bid to improve the user interface of and add applications to their set-top boxes. Comcast, for instance, recently unveiled a new cloud-based UI for its set-top boxes, and other operators — like Time Warner Cable and Cablevision — are looking to follow suit.

Until now, most set-top boxes have run proprietary operating systems. As a result, offering up Google TV as the underlying OS could simplify and accelerate the rollout of new applications on cable systems, which could improve the overall user experience on the set-top box. And by pitching Google TV as the underlying OS for Motorola set-top boxes sold to TV operators, it could very quickly create a large install base for developers to build applications for.

The one question is how open that set-top box will remain if Google shifts from a consumer- to a carrier-based model for Google TV. Operators in the TV space have been notorious for keeping their set-top experience a walled garden, and it’s unclear if they’d be willing to have their live TV and video on-demand services alongside applications like Netflix or Hulu Plus. Then again, before the iPhone and Android took over, no one thought the mobile operators would embrace an open app ecosystem on mobile handsets either.

A look at the new Google TV 2.0

On Talkgoogle.com : A look at the new Google TV 2.0

Good article with a nice set of Photo's of the Fishtank Development system that's  Intel CE4100 running the Google TV 2.0 code.

Logitech stops production of Revue box for Google TV

Logitech told Taiwan-based Gigabyte Technology to suspend production of its Revue set-top box -- the companion to Google's new Google TV service -- until sometime next month, according to a published report. A Logitech spokeswoman declined to comment, but the latest Internet reports indicate the stoppage may have been prompted by Google. TG Daily, eWeek.com, CNET/Media Maverick blog.


Shortly after Google launched Google TV in October via the Revue companion boxes and Internet TVs and Blu-ray players from Sony it became clear to many reviewers that the product felt unfinished.

Although all of the Google TV launch devices have their differences, at their core they're all running Android on an Intel CE4100 media processor, which is essentially a 1.2GHz Atom core that's been beefed up with some extra graphics hardware capable of capturing and decoding 1080p video  This is a big win for Intel in this space -- and in fact, Intel claims to have written half of Google TV's code.


http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/29/google-tv-review/

Google TV: The Future of Interactive Television?

Google TV: The Future of Interactive Television?

from ABC





First, Google revolutionized Web searches -- now it's trying to reinvent the way you watch TV.

Inside a top-secret lab in Silicon Valley, programmers are putting the finishing touches on a new product called Google TV. The company says this new device will take all the best features of watching television, surfing the Web, playing online games, and connecting with friends on Twitter and Facebook, and combine them into a single experience.

It is "a new way to think about television," said Google Senior Product Manager Rishi Chandra. "Basically what we're trying to do here is take all that content that you already watch today on television, and add all that other content that you get on the web today, that you normally can't get on your TV."

With Google TV, users can channel-surf between traditional TV shows, websites, online video, social media, and eventually programs recorded on a DVR, all with just a few clicks of the remote. (The DVR function has not yet been worked out with all major cable and satellite providers.)