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The Verge: Google Is Working on a TV Box Of Its Own
Amazon may have a slight lead in the world of Android-based TV-centric mini-boxes with its Amazon Fire TV, but according to this story, Google is getting set to release just such a box itself.
"According to documents obtained exclusively by The Verge, Google is about to launch a renewed assault on your television set called Android TV. Major video app providers are building for the platform right now. Android TV may sound like a semantic difference — after all, Google TV was based on Android — but it’s something very different. Android TV is no longer a crazy attempt to turn your TV into a bigger, more powerful smartphone. "Android TV is an entertainment interface, not a computing platform," writes Google. "It’s all about finding and enjoying content with the least amount of friction." It will be "cinematic, fun, fluid, and fast." ...
What does that all mean? It means that Android TV will look and feel a lot more like the rest of the set top boxes on the market, including Apple TV, Amazon’s Fire TV, and Roku."
This is a space littered with failures.
Including Google TV.
They seem to have Netflix on-board, a start.
But they also seem to be missing HBO, and the other movie channels. Not a deal breaker for some, but it is for me.
If you can actually two screen with an android phone as the control and second screen that's interesting.
I'll stick w/ my ~2 year old ODROID-XU running XBMC - quad core big.LITTLE @ 1.6Ghz w/ LPDDR3 all using less than about 3W playing high bitrate 1080p/24-30Hz video while running a few other services in the background (transmission / mediatomb / etc).
The price is right for the power I get, plus well established hardware (ARM core w/ PowerVR GPU - om nom nom) that can run whatever distro I want - win win win.
Did they give up on Chromecast? What is the need for something else?
If Google continues adding more fingers in different pies like it's doing, legal restraints and calls to split it up aren't far head. Each business interest leverages the others, and makes it very difficult for others to compete.
"Google is currently courting select app developers to create apps and games for Android TV"
"Earlier reports suggested Google would build Android TV itself, which would put it in direct competition with its hardware partners."
Seems like maybe they're just letting people know there's something in the pipe, so maybe some folks will hold off on buying a Fire TV, but there's not much about what the thing might look like or do.
what about there fiber tv why not just reuse them?? or do they need the Network Box to work even with an software change to them?
I don't see any mention of HBO (which FireTV also seems to lack). But I'm also wondering if the Google device will sport Amazon video, since the Fire exists.
It's kind of silly how you can't really get all things you'd want on any one device. Even the Roku lacks the ability to play iTunes content, at least directly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
- Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google
Buzz was a resounding failure, so they turned it into G+. Google TV was a resounding failure, so they turned it into Android TV.
Dear Google: putting lipstick on a pig does not change its fundamentally porcine nature.
... you're about 4-5 years late.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
We got a Logitech Revue when they dropped the price on them a few years ago. Been pretty happy with it, although not with the major broadcast networks who think that there's a difference between watching browser- based streams on a computer vs on a set-top android box, but that's another post.
Sadly, Logitech last released an update for the Revue with Android 3.2, and nothing new since then; they dropped support for it, and the only updates it seems to get any more are for the Google Play Music app. Some of the other providers, like Crunchyroll, have an app that will work with the revue, but many don't. The Revue was a good idea, seems to be pretty well implemented, but perhaps ahead of its time.
It's kind of silly how you can't really get all things you'd want on any one device.
Not only HBO, but you fail to mention Hulu (not Hulu Plus) and the major networks. (And I'm not going to count some overpriced rip-off app that wants you to pay dearly for access to content that they don't own or provide.) But there is one device that seems to provide me access to all of the on-line sources that I want, as well as letting me do local streaming in a wide variety of formats. That's a PC. I have a laptop with HDMI out that does pretty much everything that I need. Roku might be slicker and handier, but without Hulu and the networks I have no real use for it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Hopefully, the recommendation engine will work better than Google's current one on YouTube. Yeah, it's a pretty low bar, but Google's record on building useful UI's is... spotty at best.
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Even if it ends up being decent (doubtful), Google has such a terrible legacy of abandoning it's products (why should Google care about any small product line when they have so many balls in the air). Like many Google TV owners, I have a very bad aftertaste after my experience with the terribly crippled and neglected Google TV platform. Adopters of a new google TV platform should be wary - your skepticism is warranted.
That's like so 20th century.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I find it funny that MS has stated they want to be a dominate player in the living room entertainment and are once again no showing at the beginning of the fight for living room dominance. This is where the battle will be fought, not at the gaming console level I would think. While I would have to put money aside to get a Xbox One, PS4 or even a WiiU, a $40 TV on a stick I would consider picking up. $100 pricing isn't out of range, but wouldn't be as much as an impulse buy.
Oh, wait, windows 8. NM, stay out of the party.
Be seeing you...
Ugh...
Yet another dead on arrival "TV box" from yet another company. What have you guys been doing for the last 10 years? The original AppleTV (2007) came out only a year after the first Intel Macmini, it even looks a lot like the current macmini. What does this tell everyone? The Macmini was was too much for the living room. The original MacMini came out in 2005.
Here's the thing. The best "TV box" is a matter of opinion, but if you have a Wii U, that does everything except be a AppleTV streamer. If you have an AppleTV, that does everything but play games. The rest of this Android crap, is quite literately crap.
I don't know about you, but my TV has only 2 HDMI ports, where the hell am I supposed to be plugging all these things in? A logical solution herein lies:
I, and many nerds, will buy the first device that has both HDMI IN and HDMI OUT, and can record the HDMI-in and play it back through the HDMI-out or stream it to another device on my network. That is the killer-app. That is why TV sucks (I can't arbitrarily record whatever unless I have the cable company box that comes with a PVR, and even then I can't watch anything on my other devices.) In reverse, the box needs to allow streaming from all DLNA devices that support the h261/h262/h263/h264/h265 codecs as well as the VP6/7/8/9 codecs. Right now TV from LG and Samsung using Google's Android TV software is the worst crap I've ever had to use, and I can't understand why anyone would buy a "Smart TV" just to have an extra 100$ worth of parts bolted on that adds 500$ to the price.
As for marrying a TV box to a TV properly. A TV built in 1960 would last until 2000. A TV built now lasts maybe 7 years. Technology has been moving at breakneck speeds that anyone who buys a TV ends up with useless hardware the next year... IF they are actually using those features. To date I know of nobody that has ever been able to make use of any SmartTV feature other than the DLNA feature... and that still requires a PC in another room.
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Google already has several TV interface devices on the market. There's Google Chromecast, of course. Google also sells a set top-box used with Google Fiber That also comes with the Google Storage Box, which is a 2TB file server for storing downloaded content. There's the old Google TV, which is mostly Android software inside.
So Google has this covered already. They have a device for viewing TV over the Internet, and they have a cable box for their cable system. They're probably going to tweak the UI on one of those and promote that as a new product.
These have been for sale from China for at least a year: http://www.dhgate.com/wholesal... Seems to me this is old news - it looks like a finished product.
...and fuck Google TV. A couple of years ago, I bought an LG TV, which ran on Android. Fairly good performance, fairly good price. It's a 3D TV, and I was disappointed that ESPN cancelled it's 3D broadcasts just after I bought it, but what the heck. I found a Samba client that let me watch video files over my network. I even had a couple of 3D video files, like the Dr. Who Anniversary episode I could watch in 3D. Then Google "upgraded" Android. I tried EVERYTHING I could do to reject the upgrade and not accept it, but somehow it went ahead and installed the new version. Now, almost everything on the TV is broken. The native media player that was part of the original Android software is gone. The Samba client is gone. I can't even play videos from an attached USB device. LG has been less than useless. I've sent multiple emails and they are either clueless or blame Google. They have DELIBERATELY removed functionality that I specifically purchased the TV for. All that's left now is legal action.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
Amazon: I really love your services, and if you allow VOD to be played on any android i will go take Amazon Prime immediatly. Dont try to puch your kindles on me.
Google: Please focus on providing good infrastructure and OS integration in Android for everybody. Stop pushing you own Hardware. Once one company has all aspects (hardware, Software, Content) i will not like them any more.
Samsung: Stop making smart TVs or other devices with own content channels. Your services suck and the bloatware you put on your android is the worst point about these devices.
I've already posted this before the Amazon Fire TV just to be disappointed when it came out. Here it is again, maybe Google is a better listener.
The success of such boxes is eventually tied to how well they play LOCAL attached media. If it flawlessly plays my vacation photos and movies then it will stay connected to the TV. Then I might also be "consuming" whatever is on "streaming" too. But if support for local media is not there at all or if it's insufficient/buggy, the box will get disconnected and replaced with something "better".
Dear Google please make sure that you can play those JPEGs with a nice interface, and also support H.264 video with AAC sound, captions and chapters in MP4 containers, at least at the level currently supported by iPads. Add the TV streaming as a bonus and you have a winner. Fail to play the user media or force him to upload it "to the cloud" in order to view it and your box would be useless.
And oh by the way if you're also gonna do on-the-fly conversion of AAC to LPCM so any 5.1 receiver could understand it, you'll have a winner creaming all other boxes.
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Is this an advertisement for Google, Amazon, Apple, Android TV or all of the above? Or even 'The Verge'? Why even bother discussing the nuances of such posturing, it's only designed to drive traffic.
This will be an utter failure. Why? Because it's by Google: it has to fail. The only alternative is a half-assed implementation continuously changed for the sake of it, then ignored, and then finally unceremoniously cancelled.
Google: Do No Evil (we'd only screw it up if we tried!)
Microsoft wants to have the paying clientele, just like Apple. Selling $30 devices at a loss to people who will never buy or rent any movies is not lucrative to them. With Xbox you pretty much guarantee people will buy games at least, and everything is there for them to buy and rent movies as well.
The part of this that really has me paying attention is a couple of years ago google acquired SageTv, and it is rumored to be using it for it's google fiber offerings. I've had a SageTV based PVR since the mid-2000's and it's one of the few pieces of PVR software that's stood the test of time and still has features that a lot of other ones don't. If they wrap an updated SageTV with android the results could be spectacular.
Somebody needs to come up with a more effective term to describe TV-oriented appliances. Because the televisions that most people use in their homes don't have tops anymore. The top is more of an edge than a 'top' on modern televisions.
... I use Roku. I like it. I can't just try everything on the market.
Is there some compelling reason for me to try one of these other things?
Believe me, I tried re-programming the "GOOG-411" button on my Uniden phone to something else, but not luck.
- Hey look, I got a new set top box!
- Where?
- There, on top of the pile of slightly older set top boxes.
- Why do you need another one?
- Coz it's got 2 channels that I can't get on any of the others.
One day, we might get coherent, reasonable media service providers. For now, you'll have to make do with the "free market."
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Google's first attempt at TV (Google TV) failed. Their second one (Chromecast) has been a success.
But the stick format isn't right for everybody; some users might prefer a Chromecast Box with more features. If your TV has a limited number of HDMI inputs you might not want to tie one up with a stick; a box could feature HDMI passthrough, picture-in-picture combining external input and internally-generated video, and perhaps switching of multiple HDMI inputs. A box can also include a wired Ethernet port, and a USB port and SD card slot to let you show pictures and movies. The Box could also add a faster processor, more memory, and a game controller option.
A new box from Google won't replace the existing Chromecast, just as the Roku Stick has not replaced their settop boxes. It will be a product line extension, and one that will appeal to many people if Google gets the features and price right.