Samsung Google TV. Business Insider A Samsung TV with Smart TV apps. Today Samsung confirmed that it's nearly finished cutting a deal with Google to use Google TV software to power its TV sets, the Wall Street Journal reports. It seems like a strange move, given that Samsung's Smart TV apps platform has been pretty successful. The platform facilitates about 50,000 app downloads each day. But, Google's new Google TV 2.0 software is a huge step up from the previous generation. Essentially, it's something we might actually want to use. The first generation of Google TV was shipped inside set top boxes and sold incredibly poorly.
Samsung has not yet decided when it will unveil the new TV sets powered by Google TV. Don't Miss: Samsung's Galaxy S III Could Boast A Screaming Fast Quad-Core Processor > Video Impressions Of Google TV On Logitech Revue Hardware. It seems that one of the beta testers for Google TV couldn’t keep all that goodness to himself, and has posted several pictures and some video of the near-finished interface and hardware.
It’s a brief and not particularly shocking video, but seeing it running on a home TV and hearing a regular guy expressing legitimate (if subdued) excitement make it a lot more real. Sorry about the ad before the content, by the way, but you should probably get used to it. The interface looks more or less the same as when it was introduced: nested menu items starting on the left, search bar able to be evoked at any time. There are a few minor visual differences, for instance the bookmarks layout and thumbnails have been tweaked. Interestingly, “Applications” is listed twice.
The “What’s On TV” category looks handy; apparently it works as long as your cable or satellite provider has some category metadata, which is most if not all of them. [via Engadget] Hollywood Deathly Afraid Of Google TV’s Potential To Upend Television Business. Guess who’s scaring the pants off Hollywood these days? Nope, not teens in their bedrooms downloading screeners off BitTorrent or from shady release blogs, but Google. Yes, almighty Google has Hollywood feeling weak at the knees over the possibility of Google TV completely upending the television business model.
Google vs. Hollywood: now there’s a WresleMania main event that would actually draw money. There’s a story in the Los Angeles Times that notes the rather cool reception Google TV has received in certain circles in Hollywood. The main is one of self-preservation: how do we (Hollywood) prevent Google from using the Internet to destroy the “television business” like it destroyed the newspaper industry?
And I bet if you asked all the TV execs, that answer would be “stop Google TV from ever seeing the light of day.” Hollywood: not exactly the most forward-looking place to do business, is it? It’s afraid that if Google TV gets off the ground then people will stop paying for cable TV. Google Having Trouble Convincing Broadcasters to Hop On Board the Google TV Train. Google TV is, in short, supposed to supplant the set-top box although devices like the Logitech Revue won’t quite work that way.
Instead, in a symbiotic relationship akin to a pilot fish on a shark, the device will run in-line to your cable box and act as an overlay to standard programming. They will offer video on demand as well as an app environment but in general Google probably won’t touch copyrighted content – yet. However, the obvious goal here is for Google to partner with broadcasters to offer video on demand. That part isn’t working out that well. According to the WSJ, Google is having trouble talking to ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC.
Why? And Google can take the magic out of broadcasting. In the end, Google TV will get its content. See Nicholas’ take here. This Amazing Video Is Why TV Is Still Bigger Than The Internet. Introducing Google TV [VIDEO] Schmidt Says Google TV Ads Will Be a Cash Machine. Television may have been around for half a century or so, but Eric Schmidt thinks Google TV can one-up regular television — at least when it comes to advertising. Why? Because it can target ads the same way Google does online, and thus make them more relevant and more valuable to advertisers. In an interview with Fox Business Network, the Google CEO said that Google TV is about “building a platform with millions of people using these technologies” and that when you have that many people using something there are plenty of ways to make money from it.
“Our advertising is targeted,” he said, and therefore “we can do even more relevant television advertising, which should be worth a lot of money.” According to Janko over at NewTeeVee, the Google CEO dodged a question about new advertising formats, saying ads would either be delivered through websites or traditional TV programming. Watch the latest business video at <a href=" Google just shot cable’s Franz Ferdinand. One could be forgiven for writing off Google TV. After all, there are precedents for web TV failures (Apple TV) and precedents for ostentatious Google windmill-tilting (Wave, Buzz, a dozen others), so I don’t blame the doubters. I’d be one but for the fact that this is too big to be an experiment; it’s a declaration of war. The question is: against whom? Against Apple? Let’s just address the Apple and set-top box issues first. As for set-top boxes: it’s unclear just how much functionality the Logitech hardware will have, and whether Google TV will allow for mods and apps that provide Popcorn Hour or Boxee-level media management.
So it’s a holding action against Apple and an encouraging shoulder-punch to the set-top box community. Not that Google TV is going to be any great shakes when it actually hits. So why is it a threat to cable providers? But we already have weather widgets and on-demand and Boxee and TiVo! Google Has A Problem: VP8 Is Not As Good As H.264.