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Google TV 2.0 Review, Tweaks, and Screenshots
DeviceGuru writes "Google and its Google TV 2.0 partners made quite a splash at CES this week. As a followup, this detailed blog post at DeviceGuru reviews Google TV 2.0's features, specs, apps, and flexible new user interface, and shows how you can add customized folders and shortcuts to the home screen for accessing hundreds of favorite apps and websites within a couple of mouse clicks."
What about the early adopters who bought the original Google TV boxes - is there a firmware update available to bring the new features to them ? Or they are supposed to chuck them to the garbage bin and buy new ones ?
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Same comment applies to cable TV. 500 channels of nothing worth seeing.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Why should there have to be deals made to watch Internet content on a box connected to my TV?
Well that just the same old elitist "nothing but junk on TV" line. In my opinion there are plenty of good shows on TV, in fact more than I even have time to watch. Saying that there is nothing good to watch is pretty much the same when old people are crumby about how everything was better before and teens can't behave now. Now I get off your lawn!
I can agree that there are shows worth watching on TV. My problem with cable is that, to see the 5 or 6 shows I like, I've to bump up through the packages until I'm spending $80+/mo just to see them. If there are 3 currently airing in any given month I'm paying something like $20 per show. The rest of what I watch is just fluff to have something playing in the background.
I'm encouraged by Hulu, Netflix and now MSFT producing original content. At least one of the Hulu ones I've watched is actually good. I can only hope that more companies find ways to do it profitably and jump on board.
The link in the summary says one thing from google. Here's a thought from someone who isn't from google saying something about google
http://gigaom.com/video/google-tv-ces/
The last paragraph reads
While it’s clear that the CE industry needs to do something to fight fragmentation between the dozen or so smart TV platforms, it seems unlikely that Google TV will be its savior in the near future. Google might have more partners than it did a year ago, but they’re hardly adopting the platform en masse. Unless something drastic happens, don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
Very poor of slashdot to drink the Koolaid like this.
Watch those corners
I think everyone knows that HoneyComb (Android 3.0) is a stop gap Google made because Ice Cream (Android 4.0) wasn't ready. Since HoneyComb is a code dead-end, that will be abandoned after Android 4.0 comes out, isn't it clear we should wait for a Google TV based off Ice Cream or a later version of Android?
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I have a Logitech Revue with the new Google TV 2.0 and I still don't have access to many of the Streaming Channels I have on my Roku (like Hulu plus). The DLNA Media Player doesn't work, menu navigation is cumbersome, and the search feature doesn't work with Netflix. It just doesn't seem polished for TV. It's like using my Android Phone on my TV and having to navigate with a touchpad keyboard, not something my kids or wife could easily use. I think Google missed the boat with this one!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I don't get Hulu Plus on my Logitech Revue with GTV 2.0, and even if I can access it through the Chrome Browser, why would I? I'd much rather use my Roku, much simpler and easy to navigate.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I've heard the article, seen the videos, digested the spiel, but I still don't see why I'd want a Google TV box.
It's a standalone box that isn't a DVR, isn't a games console and doesn't play physical media like DVDs/BRs. And it was $300 at launch, did they seriously think they had a winner there?
It seems to be a solution to a problem that no one else thinks is a problem, if it had a least been integrated with a physical media player, or DVR (and I mean been a DVR, not sort of linked up to an external unit), it could have been justified as a replacement for something I already had, as it was it was just another expensive device wanting one of the limited HDMI ports on my TV.
I saw this demo'ed at CES and Google made a serious mistake in capability. it turns out you can run only a small set of applications available on the market on Google TV 2.0. The reason for the limited selection is that Google TV 2.0 doesn't support touch/multi-touch. I asked the Google TV person why they weren't supporting multi-touch (at least 2 finger touch) from Bluetooth keyboards/keypads that could provide this capability and hence open up pretty much the full market to Google TV 2.0. he said the capability wasn't in the OS/libraries at all because some OEMs - he specifically mentioned Sony - couldn't support it in their devices. What an amazingly stupid decision. Build the capability into the OS and let the manufacturers with half a brain support it. Users will get most of the market apps and developers will have their lives made simpler as opposed to having yet another Android fragmentation issue to deal with. A truly stupid decision.
Here we go again.
Every time I click on a news story involving Google, I'm all but positive that the first post will be:
a) Posted with a 2.5+ million UID
b) Over 100 words long, yet still posted the same minute the story goes live
c) Negative towards Google
Here we go again. Welcome back CmdrPony / InsightIn140Bytes / DCTech. Happy shilling. Hope you karma manages to hold out for more than 4 days this time.
I'd rather pay 6 companies $5-$10 a month for a total of $30-$60, and have the ability to pick and choose what I want.
If Hulu decides to charge $25/mo for access to one decent show while subsidizing 10 other crappy ones... well I cancel Hulu.
And that's the nice bit of it all. A competitor doesn't have to source STB's for clients or deal with provisioning. They don't have to spend all that money convincing you to change your cable company / phone company / isp. They don't have to send a person and a truck full of equipment to your home to install hardware. Their serviceable market is as big or as small as they want it to be, etc.
So really, the barrier to entry in distribution is a tiny fraction of what it was, which means there can be more providers, which means they have to do it competitively. I can only see that being good for us. But yeah, maybe I'm overly optimistic.
There was no mention of support for common networking protocols such as CIFS (SMB) or NFS file systems. I need the ability to navigate and play my networked media files just like I can through any computer attached to my network. DLNA was mentioned, but DLNA's file restrictions make the networking protocol totally useless. DLNA is defective by design.
It's nice to see that MKV files are supported, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any way to directly access the files over a networked connection.
So, you're suggesting they stop working on things they can control and send all of their people to the broadcaster waiting rooms?
It's not a Google should do this or Google should do that. The studios and broadcasters are actively blocking Google TV from even using Hulu or NBC.com.
This isn't a Google issue. Just like if Sony told Apple to go stuff iTunes, there would be no Sony music on iTunes. The Beatles were not on iTunes for a long time, and it wasn't the fault of Apple. They didn't want on iTunes for whatever reason.
If the networks don't want on Google TV, there isn't a damn thing in the world Google can do. The broadcasters don't even want Google to purchase Hulu, which they've shown interest in buying, but only if they have content deals extending long enough to prove it's worth anything.
You say "since Apple TV and all the competitors have worked it out (hell, even Microsoft with Xbox360!)". There are three problems with this. #1 - Apple doesn't run a competing service like YouTube. #2 - Microsoft owns a part of a broadcaster, but has no viable content business of their own seen as a threat. #3 - As far as I know, those other services are either A) Rentals (iTunes) or Subscription (Netflix).
And, unless you ignore the fact that Amazone video and Netflix among many others are available on Google TV, Google TV offers at least as much.
So, what do you want? An HBO Go App? Sure, you can get that, but only if you have an HBO subscription already. It doesn't matter if you are on XBox, Google TV, or iTV.
Some companies like HBO have said, point blank, they will never, ever offer a la carte.
So, let's back off a bit. Google is selling an interface. All they have power over is the interface. Telling Google to force broadcasters to provide content is like telling them to force cellphone carriers to provide unlimited data to all Android devices.
Not gonna happen.
I8-D
I have a Revue purchased late last year for $99 and upgraded to 2.0. Here are my answers to some of the issues posted above.
1) CIFS/SMB easily supported using File Expert. Sees and opens the SMB shares on my Ubuntu media server just fine.
2) DLNA also works. The Logitech DLNA client works just fine with both MiniDLNA and Media Tomb. The limitation is the codecs supported by Android. If Android will play it you can get it via DLNA.
3) Plex is even easier. Set up a plex server, install plex on the Revue and, voila, streaming video. Plex promises that shortly (ha) it will overcome most codec limitations.
That said I don't want to watch Hulu or some of the other sites others are interested in. I want Amazon streaming video (well supported) and ESPN. Amazon is well supported and ESPN is reasonably will supported. The problem with ESPN is in Flash and, as I understand it, is partially a problem of Adobe, Google, ESPN and hardware. There are some glitches on all fronts, one of the most important is that when Flash sites are coded they make assumptions about the minimum level of hardware available on the client (memory, processor speed, storage) that the Revue does not meet.
So for me its a win. Amazon + 90% ESPN + excellent integration with my Dish box + full web browser + personal movies and photos. Your mileage may vary.
Nothing is on.
A fancier real-time viewer is not going to change that fact.
You need something to search through all of those 500 channels for weeks on end day and night to find the few things that are worth bothering with. If you just "channel surf", you are not likely to find anything.
Unfiltered cable does seem like crap.
You need a different kind of device. It's not GoogleTV. It's trying to solve the wrong problem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yes, he actually is wrong. He is setting the problem up as "TV over the Internet should work exactly the same way as TV has for the last 100 years". It doesn't.
And the insidiousness is that you can't even reason with him - he is being paid for his opinion, and no amount of logic will be able to change his advertisement (and yes, that's what it is) that Google is bad, and FB and MS are good.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I own both an AppleTV and a Roku XDS. The Apple has only HDMI output and Ethernet, and will do really annoying things like quit providing Internet Radio within just a few minutes if you turn off the HDMI monitor.
The Roku XDS has HDMI+audio, composite, component, analog audio, digital optical audio and USB ports, along with WiFi and Ethernet connectivity. And it works just fine if you tune in, say, the (totally awesome) 1rockfm* stream, and then turn off the monitor.
The *new* Roku looks more like the AppleTV, it's missing all that glorious connectivity; that lack sent us to EBay recently looking for another Roku XDS.
The very first thing that comes to mind when I hear about new set-top boxes is connectivity. Because what use is one of these if you can't hook up to it? And why should I have to keep my video monitor on in order to listen to an audio stream?
*not associated with 1rockfm other than it's my favorite rock station
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.