GoogleTV, AppleTV and the Battle For The Living Room

An anonymous reader pointed us to an article talking about Google TV and AppleTV challenging the major networks and taking their place in your living room. It'll be a tough battle, amusingly waged on cable company wires in many major markets.

Comments

with net neutrality not going to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

they won't get far off the ground. when it takes money out of the cable company mouths (the ISPs), they will throttle down google tv and apple tv so that you will have to use their services instead and there will be nothing we can do about it because enforcing net neutrality is big government intervention - just go ask the tea party people - they are adamant against net neutrality

Net neutrality

[codewarren]

And when the cable company says you can't use our lines for that... the guantlet for net neutrality will be thrown also.

(or when the cable company says, "look we have tv over the internet now too" like they did with phone service)

Re:Net neutrality

[MozeeToby]

(or when the cable company says, "look we have tv over the internet now too" like they did with phone service)

So? Let them, then there would be three TV over IP services vying for my money instead of just two (actually between Netflix, Amazon, and the possible multitude of Android based players there will be many more than three but you get the point). Though I suspect rather than "you can't use our lines for that" it will be a computer nerd shacked up in his workshop doing tests on each of the devices that discovers that the cable company's offering magically gets better bandwidth and latency than their competition. Though which cable companies will be stupid enough to pick a fight with the likes of Google and Apple at the same time remains to be seen (but you just know there will be at least one of them that thinks they can get away with it).

Re:Net neutrality

[webheaded]

And if you're in an area where both companies do it?

I get tired about hearing about great old capitalism and choices in a market that essentially HAS NO CHOICES. I'm all for letting the market decide, but some people seem determined to fit a square peg in a round hole. It doesn't work in every single market. Stop parroting that crap and think about it for a minute. I mean seriously think. It's entirely possible that BOTH companies offering these services are simply going to dictate to you what you're allowed to do with their service and there is not a single thing you can do it. In other words, you can't vote for your wallet if there's no one there to vote for.

Doesn't matter

[qsqueeq]

My wife still gets the remote.

Youtube better

[AnonymousClown]

This is good news for both Google and Apple. Bad news for the networks. But lets face it, when YouTube with its piano playing cats, hyperactive teenagers and snippets of prime time TV manages to outperform the major networks, the major networks have only themselves to blame!

Cats? I use Youtube for instructional videos and things like that. Reading about something, anything, and don't understand it? Somewhere there's a video that shows you how to do it. Want to know what is the real deal that Wall Street cut with the Congressmen? Go to Youtube.

Because network TV just rehashes the same shit.

PBS turned into the Antiques, Beatles, Wayne Dyer, Suzy Orman, Ken Burns network.

Lesser evil

[guyminuslife]

Hmmm. So do I want a locked-down, shiny piece of Jobsified crap, or do I want a television that watches me? [insert pre-emptive "In Soviet Russia..." here]

Oh, who am I kidding, I want them both.

UI?

[UnknowingFool]

From the demo, Google TV requires some sort of keyboard/mouse interface. From the FAQ, it doesn't appear that it will be a standard Bluetooth one. Other the other end, Apple has a simplified remote but will allow for control through one of the iOS devices. I think where the battle will be won is how consumers will like the UI.

Re:UI?

[Zizagoo]

From the demo, Google TV requires some sort of keyboard/mouse interface. From the FAQ, it doesn't appear that it will be a standard Bluetooth one. Other the other end, Apple has a simplified remote but will allow for control through one of the iOS devices. I think where the battle will be won is how consumers will like the UI.

At the demo in Berlin they said there will be both Android and iOS apps for controlling Google TV. They even mentioned voice search integration.

Re:UI?

[Speare]

At the demo in Berlin they said there will be both Android and iOS apps for controlling Google TV. They even mentioned voice search integration.

I can just see it now. I'm watching a Star Trek episode, and Picard gives the shipboard computer a prompt, such as "Computer! Find all Starfleet regulations on personnel transfers." Suddenly my television starts playing a completely different program in my video library. Hopefully not something I put in the "embarrassing" folder.

mythtv...

[nblender]

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out... My household has been a bit of an experiment as I switched to Mythtv about 5 or 6 years ago... First with satellite receivers hooked to capture cards and most recently cable TV tuners hooked to firewire... MythTV with all of its warts is actually relatively good... I've found though, that I can get higher quality and more current programming from the Bitorrent Channel than I can from any of the cable channels so an account on a few private trackers with a client that can do RSS feeds and a seedbox has pretty much supplanted our need for the cable connection... In fact, I'd sooner download a show than let my Mythbackend record it from cable... I still pay the cable bill, though.. The bitorrent channel doesn't get Antiques Roadshows and other shows that my wife watches... Plus, I sort of justify it to myself that I'm still paying for the content; I just choose to get a 3rd party (the scene) to de-commercialize it for me...

Wife Acceptance Factor is pretty high.. In fact, she hates LiveTV now... My son has grown up not really knowing what a commercial is.. When we visited the inlaws this summer, he was watching TV with his grandfather... A commercial came on and he was looking for the skip button.. Our livingroom at home sports a moderately sized LCD with an Acer Revo bolted to the back on the VESA mount. No cables are visible and the remote is a wireless keyboard. No stereo cabinet...

If I could get all of the shows I watch in reasonable quality (720p) automatically sent to a local storage device where I can play them back any time, and as many times as I want, I'd happily pay $70-$80/month (plus price of internet connectivity) for the privilege... I'm dubious that this is going to happen however. It'll probably be substantially more expensive, limit the number of times I can view a show, and if my hardware ever fails, I will have to repurchase all of my content.

If only they'd focus on giving consumers what they want; they'd make a ton more money.

Apple is out to hunt bigger game than cable

[joeflies]

It looks like that Apple TV is out to replace cable companies, but I think that's only a superficial view of the long term plan. There's been no announcement to date that Apple plans to offer any channel that appears on cable .. rather they go through online content providers. They complete skipped the major gripe of cable, i.e. to offer a "subscribe to channels you want ala carte", and changed the game to "buy what episodes you want to see, on demand".

Which leads to the question .. so what role do the networks play in the grand scheme of things ... NBC / ABC / CBS / FOX are not all developing their own content, they buy that content from a show producer. If Apple develops enough mindshare and living rooms, you don't need NBC to order the episodes of a new show, Apple can buy it directly from the show's producers.

This could be a great play to cut out all the middlemen, not just the cable company or the satellite monthly fee, but the entire tv network system as well ... it's possibly the biggest change in the business of TV in 50 years, and frankly none of the TV networks seem to notice yet.

Re:Still can't beat a console.

[HermMunster]

The fly in Apple's pie is that they can't get all the content brought together in a cohesive manner which allows the phobe to just watch what they want. Apple's walled garden is to blame. Apple would have to sign with everyone, and that's just not possible. As it stands it has two. ABC includes Disney, but two isn't enough to make a success.

Google on the other hand can partner with anyone without forcing them behind a walled garden. Google is about open access to all web video. Apple is about closed walled garden content that they can sell. In the long run Google wins. Google's TV and Apple TV are correlate directly to the Android's open nature vs. Apple's iOS which is closed and will never be opened.