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Google TV Suffers Setback
An anonymous reader writes "Google TV has now been around long enough for the geeks to play around with it. And they have come back with disappointing reviews. While most were excited at the concept of wedlock between the TV and Internet, the marriage itself looks destined to be challenging."
And in other news, Apple TV is selling like hot cakes. It just shows, like always before, that casual people don't really care about the geeky things those devices can offer. The older I get the more I can side with them too - when I was a teenager I had lots of energy and motivation to play around with computers and other technical stuff I had. Then I got a job, a girlfriend, went to travel the world and saw how much you're giving up by spending so much time with that. In the end, it's not really even that interesting.
Now I also just want devices that work great. I don't really have any desire to play around with them, apart from the occasional configuration to make things smoother for me. But there is a limit for that, and I'm not gonna spend hours and days coding something to accomplish it. This is also why general population will never turn to use Linux if something doesn't change, and can you really blame them?
the internet has made it to my tv, i get it through my ps3. why would i want another device that basically does the same thing but less of it?
TV is a passive medium for the vast majority of people and that's how they like it. Plop on the couch, select your channel and let somebody else make the decisions about what you'd like to watch. Most people don't have a home media server and don't understand why you'd want one (because nobody has explained that your DVD cupboard is basically a sneakernet server, and having everything you want to watch a button click away like music just hasn't happened yet).
Actually that's a good analogy - we have a home media server and various cobbled together clients around the house, and it's interesting to watch the usage patterns: Music videos get shuffled like a giant video ipod on the main TV, it's like the best MTV that never was with the bonus you can skip stuff you don't want to listen to. Kids want to watch 3 or 4 episodes of iCarly in a row. Parents want to be able to consume a serial like Dexter without the annoying "wait a week for the next episode" that broadcast TV forces on you.
Most people will want this stuff, they just haven't seen it - so do Google a favour and invite your non-tech-savvy friends to a demonstration of your media serving rigs (assuming you've gone to the trouble of making it demo friendly and can resist the urge to fiddle with technical stuff while you're showing them). What is going to be a killer is pricing - if Google could negoatiate to broadcast a channel of cheap stuff so the "plop on the couch and watch" crew could enjoy another TV channel without having to think too much, they may be tempted to purchase premium content like first run serials without the hassle of torrents.
I had looked at various "media" devices such as the Roku, but all came up way short. I was shocked to find that, apparently because of their business model, the Roku will not play the free Hulu content, even if you buy a Hulu Plus subscription (and there is a lot on regular Hulu that is unavailable on Hulu Plus). Google TV was about the only consumer oriented appliance that I found that gave me everything that a browser would have access to. But at the $300 price of the Logitech version it is way too much for too little. For that kind of money I might as well build a PC that I can dedicate to the living room. I could not only browse everything on the web, but I could also install and play web oriented games on the big screen, and run other applications that Web TV can't such as Skype, TeamSpeak, Google Earth and so on. And I've also found myself wanting a DVR that isn't dependent on my having a cable or satellite provider, and it looks like to get that done right I'll have to base it on a PC anyway. So it was obvious that Web TV as it is currently offered is too little for too high of a price. A cute toy, but only for those who have too much money and not enough imagination to see what they can do with a real computer instead.
One big downside is that somehow turning a case from the typical vertical design into a horizontal case that would better fit in a media center seems to be very expensive. In my shopping I've found horizontal form factor cases for as much as $200, and that is without a power supply. Obviously I can get much nicer vertical cases a lot cheaper. I'm still hoping to find a case maker that is making a decent case at a reasonable price (responses welcome).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Thats not a normal person solution. I have boxee on a home media server, used to do mythtv but I moved out of a place where I had provided cable and without cable it wasn't worth the hassle. Its certainly possible, and its great once its set up, but it requires active maintenance.
My personal desires are for a single, low-power, easy-setup box that can:
- Stream from Netflix
- Stream from Hulu/Hulu Plus (to be legit it probably requires hulu plus)
- Stream from Pandora
- Run local/LAN-shared video and audio with good codec support
- Extensible to help future proof it (i.e. easy to integrate some new streaming service)
Additionally, I'm sure there are those who would appreciate some kind of DVR functionality in it as well.
So far the Boxee Box is supposed to be that, but between the hideous hardware, and the fact that they screwed up the interface and that it doesn't work with Hulu or Netflix anymore., its just not quite there. Maybe the next iteration. The Wii with a few more apps would do a decent job too (although the resolution might annoy some).
Sadly, its impossible to have a good, easy to use solution at this point, not due to technological challenges, (I think Google TV, Apple TV and Boxee all have a lot of potential), but because the content providers are scared to death of us not tuning in 8 eastern/7 central with everyone else. I suppose in time it will turn around, but for now its very frustrating for those of us who dont want to have to hack together 'creative' solutions.