What the heck is Google TV?

other people. It's a very popular topic right now. Yeah, because at the time that we're recording this podcast, the announcement of Google TV is is pretty much fresh. It just came out the week before we're sitting down to record this. Now, by the time it publishes, obviously it

will be around a little bit longer than that. But we want to talk about what Google TV is and whether or not it has a chance of succeeding and UH and why other attempts at bringing internet television uh to to the consumer market have not really taken off. And I guess the best way of doing this is to kind of look at where internet TV has been over the last several years. Okay, that sounds good to me.

So internet TV is not anything new as anyone who has visited the Consumer Electronics Showcase in the last uh oh, I don't know, five ten years could tell you. Internet TV has been a discussion point among multiple manufacturers for several years. And in fact, there are some television's out there that already incorporate some sort of of Internet or web based um uh content you know that you can you can access. Most of them are fairly limited, and that might be the big reason why it hasn't really

taken off. Before the televisions and set top boxes were on the scene, really, the only way you were going to get anything on the Internet on your television was by hooking your computer up to your TV. Oh, I mean there's web TV the only good way to get Yeah, no, what's turned I just turned Jonathan's face a little green.

I think No. I actually had a friend who had web TV, and I uh, I was never intrigued by the product, mainly because I already had, you know, a computer that could access the web and uh and when I looked at the product and use I I just

if I could tell it was not for me. Well, I will say though, that products like web TV, products like DVRs, um they're all sort of factors in the hype for Google TV, and then they're all sort of in some way, um sort of a predecessor, you know, or maybe a part of the concept behind short TV. It's a unification of those things. Yeah, yeah, if you

will convergence, yeah yeah, it's it's definitely been an evolution. Uh. If you look back at the early the early solutions besides hooking a computer up to your television, the biggest problem with that is it's a barrier to the average consumer. Because we've talked about this before, there appears to be a fundamentally intimidating factor of hooking your computer up to your TV for most consumers. Now, for some of you guys listening out there, you're probably thinking, Hey, I've had

a computer hotel to my TV for years. There's nothing that's there's no real big deal about it. You just get a couple of pieces of software, you get the right cable, you hook it up, and you're ready to go.

And that's true. But for the average consumer who's used to having a television and maybe a couple of boxes that hook up directly and do all the work for you, it seems like it's a pretty intimidating, uh endeavor, especially when you start thinking do I want to have to sit down and watch my TV with a keyboard on my lap in order to to see the things I want to see? And a lot of consumers don't, which may end up being a problem for Google TV. But

we'll get to that. So we move beyond the hooking your computer up to your television television, which some people would say is still the best option, and in fact, I'm not going to disagree it's gonna be hooking a computer up to your TV is probably going to give you the widest array of options out of anything that's currently on the market. Um, but again still has that intimidation factor. If you move beyond that, then we start looking at the products that have slowly begun to integrate

web based content into their into the system. So things even like ti Vo has has this right right, Well, I'm TiVo and other digital video recorders in general. Um, even when they just got started, they offered you the opportunity to record video, of course, but you also had things like an electronic program guide. Um, you had the ability in in some cases, especially with with ti Vo,

to set up subscriptions. So what it would have to do would be to call in to the Tebow subscription, at least in the earliest versions, that would actually make a phone call with the modem to get the program information to use on the electronic program guide, and you could say, you know what, I want to watch every new episode of Lost as soon as it comes on, so the TVO would go out get the information about when it was on. Say ABC changes it from Tuesday

night to Thursday night. I never watched Laws, so I know I probably have gotten the dates wrong. But let's just say they changed the show, whatever show it is, from one night to the other. The electronic program GUDE is going to be instantly updated when I instantly, but when it calls in, it's gonna be updated. It's gonna know when the show has changed. It's you know, it's changed, the date, it's changed the time slot. It can go

ahead and get that information for you. So it's far more interactive than setting your TV for you know, every Tuesday night at eight o'clock and then finding out, uh, you know, via a paper guide manually and saying, oh man, I missed Tuesday night's episode of my show because I didn't realize that they had changed nights and time slots on me and now I I'm stuck. This is far more interactive. It it allows you uh some control over these things without having to mess with it, but it's

still not accessing the Internet proper to get that information. Now, later models of TVO and some of the other DVRs actually do access the Internet, but if they're only accessing it for the electronic program guide in the programming information to get your TV shows, that's not really the same as what Google TV is offering, right. And then you have the devices like Roku or Apple TV, which give you an access to a slice of content from the web, but it's not it's not unfettered access to what's on

the web. So, for example, with Roku, you would have these various channels that they've set up where you can access content from those channels, and it's not channels in the sense of a cable operator. It's more like a content provider. So, for example, one of the channels, which of course is this is something that you can find across multiple devices now, is the Netflix Instant streaming channel. So if you are a Netflix subscriber and you have

access to the instant streaming service that they provide. You can use a Roku box to access your instance streaming que and and stream it to your television. So you can watch this stuff that you know, Normally you might think you'd have to watch it on a computer screen. You can watch it on your big screen TV. Now there are actually lots of different ways that you can access Netflix streaming, which to me just says that Netflix has got like the plan. If you're a content provider,

look at Netflix, because they are doing it right. They you can find them across multiple platforms, including video game consoles like the Xbox three sixty, the p S three, and the wies, so they are going into more houses than than pretty much any other content provider um and other platforms as well. They have apps for uh, the iPad and I believe the iPod and iPhone as well, and you know other mobile devices, so they are they're

reaching out to those markets as well. So you could we'll be waiting for the subway to watch your show and still be able to access that. There's a there's a Netflix app for Android as well, although the Android app is is mainly being able to manage the que. Manage the que exactly it's not to watch the content, it's to manage the Q which is probably a good thing because I think trying to stream that content to your mobile device, especially if you're on the move, would

be a pretty unsatisfying experience. You would either get a really poor quality video and audio or it would take forever for it to stream. Well, yeah, that and it's going to tax the wireless network exactly. And if you yeah, that's the other problem. And I'm sure the network providers don't want to see that. So at any rate, I'm sorry you were going to say, I was going to mention Apple TV, since you please. That's a little different model because Apple TV um is a box that actually

has been on the market for quite some time. People have I've been talking about the possibility that Apple may kill the device because it doesn't seem like it's very popular. Uh uh, you know, it's just one of those things that it's a hey, wait, that's still for sale sort

of thing. But um, it's sort of an in between two as far as the way it works, because you might buy a show or subscribe to a show on the iTunes store, have it downloaded to your Apple TV, and then you connect that to your TV and watch the content from there. But you're going show by show and you know you're buying this and whatever is on iTunes, exactly, you can't. You can't use it to access all the video content that you can find across the web, which

is also true if the Netflix, right. Yeah, the Roku box is the same way. The Roku Box you only have access to the channels that Roku has made partnerships with, so like major League Baseball would be another great example. You'll be able to watch all these Baseball games that are not in your local area U through the Roku Box. Other boxes also have deals with Major League Baseball. So on the set top side, we have this kind limited

access to web content. On television's Meanwhile, there were some televisions that had a little limited access to web content. Some of them only went with widgets, so you would have a channel essentially on your TV where you could go and access widgets to find things like the latest news headlines, weather reports, stock tips, with that kind of stuff. Things that we're useful, but again it was a very narrow slice of all the content that's on the web.

Now this leads us to Google TV, which is a much broader approach to getting content from the web onto your television set. Google TV is built upon Android, the Android operating system Android two point one to be specific. Uh. The web browser that it's using is the Chrome web browser, So we're sticking with Google products here. That's not a big surprise. And it's using the Intel Adom microprocessor to generate the power it needs to both be able to

display video and to act as web content. So that's that's where your your backbone is. That's your Android operating system,

Chrome web browser, Intel microprocessor. Uh. The idea behind Google TV is that you would be able to access pretty much all of the Web through your television in a very in a simplified user interface, so that it looks very familiar to anyone who's ever used the Chrome web browser, and it integrates not just the web content, but your television content as well, depending on how you're getting that

TV content. So let's say you're getting it via satellite or cable and you want to search for a specific program, you could go into Google TV on your television. You've got a keyboard. This is one of the parts where I'm saying that this might be a problem because again consumers don't generally want to have to have a keyboard in order to access their their television programming. This might be the tipping point for that. It could, it could. This is this has been pretty intriguing, I think to

a lot of people in that regard. So things, Yeah, they could search for a program on in a browser, something that looks like the Chrome browser, and by searching for that program, Google will search not just the the web, it will search your DVR, and it might search the actual live broadcasts that are coming in through whatever content provider you're using, whether it's satellite or cable or whatever, so that it will when the results that will come

up will include various options. So let's say that you are three episodes behind on House and you want to search for House. You can search for that, and it's gonna bring up the next uh any any episodes that you might have on your DVR. That will bring up the result for whenever it's gonna show next live on TV, and it may bring up something like Hulu where you can watch the last few episodes on Hulu and m and again, it's giving you access to essentially the entire web.

You're no longer looking at Little Pie slices. UM. Now, that's truly revolutionary when it comes to web based content on the Internet. If you don't, if you haven't taken the step of connecting a computer to the TV. Because again, if you have already done that, then you you pretty much have access to all of this. It's just just do it yourself project as opposed to it's all coming in a package with a Google And Google is working with some pretty big names to to bring some products

to market UM, possibly as early as faul. Yes, they've already been talking with people like Sony and Logitech on products and and uh, there's a probability to that. I shouldn't even say it's a probability. It's uh, you won't necessarily have to connect a box to your TV. They're working on TVs. They'll have the necessary equipment inside so that you will be able to do this without having

to hook up a second piece of equipment. Right, So you would just hook the your your you know, however, you're getting your your UM broadband service, so uh and and some of the TVs may even have a WiFi UH card in them so that you you know, they wirelessly hook up to your home network, which is that's always a good thing because you're thinking, well, good thing in the sense that it's one less cable to have to worry about. Of course, if you don't have a

very fast home network connection, then that's a problem. Or if lots and lots of people are trying to access a wireless network as you're running the demo for a Google TV, apparently that is also a problem. Yeah, I watched, so I guess you watched the key note where they had multiple issues. Yeah, that's that's one of the problems of any high tech keynote speech now is that everyone who's in the audience is also trying to access the

same network you are using to give your demo. So either you need a private network that no one else has access to, or you need to have everything, uh just run as a presentation as opposed to a live demo, because it's just really hard to get through otherwise. Yeah. I don't think there's a tech company around that has had a live that has never had a problem with

a live demonstration of some kind. I guess. I guess they can be thankful that they didn't have any instances of showing a website with a big box with a question mark on it saying that it's lacking the proper plug in order to display it. Apple. Yeah, and uh so the going back to to the Google TV's plan here, So I think what Google TV has really managed to do. I think what Google has managed to do is look at how consumers have been getting used to accessing more

and more entertainment content via the web. Back when internet TVs first started hitting the market, that was pretty much a very niche audience. There are very few people comparatively speaking, who were accessing entertainment online. For one thing, there weren't a whole lot of official channels where you could access

entertainment online. So if you were accessing entertainment online, there was a fair percentage that you were pirating it or that you were going through some proxy site to view UM television programs that were not authorized to be shown online. Uh And then you started to see partnerships with companies like Hulu and various content providers where you had official channels where you could watch real network programming or cable

programming that was authorized by the content provider UM. And that's when people started to say, hey, you know what I missed last night's episode, I didn't set the dvr, um or there's this new show that I didn't even know about, so I didn't even know to set the DVR. But I can go to Hulu and I can watch it.

And more and more people I think have become comfortable with watching stuff online, and they're they're even comfortable watching it on a small form factor like a laptop, you know, or uh in some cases even you know, an iPod if they're getting it through iTunes. Um. But I think if you ask any of them, hey, would you like to have the freedom that you have accessing entertainment online where you can look at things like the last five

episodes on Hulu of any particular show. Would you like to have that freedom on your actual television where you're no longer using your TV to access whatever the programming is that the content providers are are allowing you to access, and instead you're able to access a much larger pool of content. I think most people would say, yeah, I would love that. I just don't want a clunky interface

between me and the content. And that's Google TV's biggest hurdle, I think, is to make that that interface as smooth and easy as possible and to try and minimize the impact of Hey, you're gonna need a keyboard to be able to use this completely. Um. Once they're able to get to that point, I think that this product could

have huge success. Yeah. One other advantage that Google has with doing Google TV is that it's using its Android operating system, and uh third party providers are going to be able to write applications for Google TV just as they would for other Google Android operating system UH platforms, So that's going to be an advantage to for them. Um. Google will actually even have a YouTube interface um. Of course Google's parent company for YouTube. UM, but there's it's

what it's called YouTube lean Back. It's and it's designed to be couch ready, yes if you will, so you don't have to go in and start searching for stuff using a keyboard necessarily. And we'll have it'll have pre selected videos that uh that you are supposedly going to be predisposed to enjoying based upon your own behaviors online

on YouTube and what your friends enjoy watching. So it also presupposes that your friends enjoy the same things you do, which thinking of my friends means I'm in I'm in store for some of the scariest videos that you have ever seen online, because good lord, those guys are freaks. Hey guys, how you doing? Um? So yeah, I mean I think Google TV is going to be an important step in the evolution of TV and computer you know, convergence with that word again, um. But you know, it

does require the participation of the content providers. You have been traditionally a little reticent to share their information. I think personally, I would say that's probably because a lot of people associate digital with easy to copy and distribute um without any regard for copyright, and that's not necessarily true of different interfaces. And it's also associated with reduced revenue because you're not getting the same amount of ad

revenue online as you are through television broadcast. But I think Google's approach kind of circumvents that a little bit because you're still getting content through your normal you know providers, You're still getting content through cable and satellite. You're just also able to access content on the web. It's not it's not like Google's forcing content providers to to put all of their stuff on the web. It's just allowing customers to access the stuff that's on the web as

well as the stuff that's on their TV. And I think that's the right approach because it's less threatening to the content providers. Right. It's not saying, hey, if you don't play our game, then you're gonna get left behind. It's saying, we're giving customers more options and they still want to watch your content. If it's good content, they're gonna go and say, oh, it's eight o'clock, I need to tune into MythBusters, which is an awesome show. You

know they're still gonna do that. It's not saying that you need to put MythBusters online or else no one will watch it, which I mean everyone knows that that's not true because they're awesome. Well of course, um, but

actually that I think two. You can see signs of that in the the partnerships developed are developing, I should say, rather around the TV Everywhere initiatives, which are basically started by Time Warner and by comcasts who basically are trying to find ways to get content providers on board and

offer access to a subscriber's TV shows anywhere. Um. In this case, a subscriber to the cable services of one of those companies would be able to watch their favorite shows on a TV or what they log in, you know, the proper, proper credentials. They could watch it on their laptop or on their desktop computer at work when they're supposed to be doing something important. Um. But but you know, maybe they're on I never ever Thorty Rock. But perhaps

they're on the road. You have a busy executive who's on the road, has a difficult time watching his or her favorite shows and can tune in anywhere regardless of where it is by using this initiative. And I think that some of the content or fighters are going, oh, well, if they're paying us via a subscription, and you know, we can identify them as a paid subscriber, then maybe that's not so bad. And also no, no, please continue,

I don't interrupt. Well no, no, Um there there's another Dish network also has a TV Everywhere initiative that is a little different because they a couple of years ago purchased sling Media, which makes the Slingbox place shifting technology that allows you to watch content from your DVR box on different media and it's sort of circumvents the whole necessary I mean that's baked in you have to log

into these services. Speaking a Dish Network subscriber and former employee, UM, you you actually UM log in to the soft where you have to have a log into that account to be able to see the information coming from your DVR or from your your set top box. So it essentially achieves the same purpose. As long as you're you know, using enabled hardware and you're logged in, you have access to the programming for which you are already paying. And I think content providers are a little bit more okay

with that. Yeah, And the reason you would want something like that is one it allows you to keep up with things like the local news, which you wouldn't get necessarily if you were on the road, or sporting events. Sporting events are huge, that's the biggest That's kind of the biggest hurdle for web tv because UM sporting events have their own set of really complex rules about where

they can and can't be shown. So if you wanted to catch the local game of your your home sports team and you're in a different market, UM, you have only a few options. One of them is to be let let's say it's baseball, then one of your options is to be a subscriber to Major League Baseball's online service where, which would allow you to watch games that are when you are outside of that market. Another would

be the slingbox that is that you were talking. But as for the Television Everywhere UH initiative, the nice thing about Google TV is I don't think it competes with that at all. No, not really. It's actually kind of a supplement to it, really because again, it would just give you another way of accessing the online portion. So let's say that, let's say that your agreement with Comcast where you can access the the programming either online or

UH or on your television because you're already a Comcast subscriber. UM, if it allows you to access any back episodes, or if it allows you to watch any episode that previously aired, or for up to a week. Let's say so, let's say that Tuesday's new episode of such and such came

on and it's Thursday, you missed it. If you're able to log onto the Comcast one and still watch Tuesday's episode up until the following Tuesday, UM, that would still be useful on your Google TV, assuming you didn't already have some sort of DVR built in there. You would be able to go back and watch the episode you

had missed because you were subscribed to that program. So, UM, we don't know really any of the other details about Google TV, like is it a subscription based model, is it just a product, is it is the price of the product just built into whatever it is you're gonna be purchasing. We don't really know all of those details yet. Um,

and uh, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Uh. What I'm really interested in is the potential of using something like Google TV and marrying that with things like video games, so that you could use a you know, I could see that Google TV evolving to the point where you could subscribe to a video game service and kind of like the cloud video game systems that we've talked about in the past, you would be able to play video games over your broadband connection without the need

for a disk or anything like that. And so, you know, you want to jump on a game and play a few first person shooter multiplayer games, you might be able to do it through Google TV in the future, right, And they haven't talked about that, but it's a possibility. Yeah, as as we've been talking about this, I think I would have to say that I see this not as an end point but just another step in the convergence of content and platform. So basically, we'll have content coming

from multiple sources and you can watch it on multiple platforms. Yeah, we could ultimately get to the point where it's like a giant stream of content and the way you access it is up to you. Yeah, that's that's probably where we are ultimately heading. But it'll still take a while before we get there, because I mean, we're moving from one established model into something that's still being kind of of formed as we speak, so it'll be a while

before we get there. But it's definitely an exciting future. It's fascinating to watch to just to to see what kinds of content are enduring. And the ones that, for me, it's even more funny are the ones that the models that they predict will be dying any minute now, and that just you know, people really like things like TV. They just want to be able to watch it in

different places. I think. I think part of the danger is that we look at the folks who are way way way ahead of the average consumer, and we're basing everyone's behavior upon a very small sample population and that's always dangerous because there's always gonna be some people who will run out and adopt something that doesn't necessarily mean it will be successful. Uh, look at all the people

who adopted LaserDisc or HD DVD UM. These are things that that met with initial success but ultimately didn't make a huge impact in the overall market. Yeah. Yeah, I'm still trying to find a way to hook up my Beta Max to my slingbox. Good luck with that. So, uh well, that wraps up that discussion. Let's let's hit a little listener mail. This listener mail comes from Angela, and Angela says, in morning, Chris and Jonathan, Hey, how do you know? We're recording this in the morning study afternoon.

While listening to your recently aired episode, I became increasingly interested in learning more about Ada Lovelace. I opened Google Chrome and began searching for any type of media about her. I opened four tabs Google etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. She wanted to know, is there a search engine that could encompass all of the websites that she wanted to search, consolidate them into one largely organized search result. And Uh, if there is, what is it and Chris you had an

answer for Angela, Yeah, directly. The first thing I thought of was role yo, which is r O L L y o dot com. And it's a way to, uh basically create your own search engine. You you can search multiple websites at one time, and you can specify which ones. Um. You know. It's a it's a very customizable platform. You can create an account and have multiple search engines by which you know, you you have your own uh search roles um you know that you can use for different platforms,

especially useful if you have multiple searches. You know, in this case, she had something that she was looking for in particular, but if she does a lot of searching on those same websites for topics like that, she's gonna want to create an account, uh to do that so she can, you know, bring that up in a moment's notice. You can also their plug ins for different browsers as

well that use that. But there are other meta search engines such as Dogpile or Clusty that search multiple search engines, uh, you know, Yahoo, being Google and all those others at the same time, so that you're getting the multiple the effect of searching a whole bunch of search engines at once, because not all of them use the same algorithms to bring up content, so it can be very useful. But Rollo is a lot more customizable and you can search

individual websites like right. So Rollo is kind of like the precision Uh, you're using a scalpel to go and try and whereas the other one is like you're you're you're doing widespread bombing right right. It's a difference precision and recall, and you probably don't want me to launch into that right at any rate. Hopefully that answers your question, Angela, And if any of you have questions for us, you

can write us. Our email address is tex Stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I'll talk to you again really soon if you're a tech stuff and be sure to check us out on Twitter Text Stuff hs wsr handle and you can also find us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash tech stuff h s W for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the House stuff Works homepage. Brought to you by the

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