Google TV is the technology which puts all the things you want to watch – from the hundreds of paid TV channels available today to the limitless number of Web and streaming videos – right at your fingertips. Google TV combines the entire Web and all available TV content in one place, with one interface – eliminating the need to toggle back and forth between multiple screens.
Apart from streaming web video contents and conventional TV programming, Google TV offers Google web search and Android based applications, thus serving as a total ‘entertainment hub’ for users.
Google TV also provides the facility to use services like Facebook, Twitter or any other website along with viewing television programming in a split screen mode. Users also have the option to search TV programmes and from the search results, they can select live television content or earlier episodes which were made available online.
Regarding the Add-ons, Google TV service will be incorporating video-on-demand products from Amazon.com, Netflix and Walt Disney co-owned video site Hulu.
Google TV will be made available either embedded in television sets or as a standalone set top box, or as a web-based service meant for computers and smartphones. The hardware for Google TV is provided by Sony and Logitech. Sony will make the TV using intel chips and Logitech will provide remote control and wireless keyboard. Apart from televisions, Sony will incorporate the service into their Blu-ray players also. Logitech will incorporate the service in their set top boxes.
The software for Google TV will be Google’s own Android platform. Since Google TV comes with Android OS, users can configure their Android based mobile phones to use as controls for the television directly or through web.
Recently, Google had challenged web developers to develop Android applications for the Google TV and hence the possibility of integrating third party applications in Google TV is large. For the purpose, Google will be launching Google TV SDK and web APIs for TV for developers to build and distribute applications.
Google is also aggressively planning for the product’s international expansion and by 2011, Google TV will be available in the global market. Google TV will probably hit the Indian markets by 2011. For Indian users, the challenges in adopting a Google TV include:
- The cost of buying external hardware
- A minimum bandwidth connection of 3 Mbps for smooth playback and performance.
- Lack of user awareness in Android platform and applications. [source]
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