“At this early stage, only three gadgets have Google TV: a 46-inch Sony TV (the catchy-named NSX-46GT1, $1,400) and two devices that put it on your existing TV, a Sony Blu-ray player (NSZ-GT1, $400) and a set-top box from Logitech called the Revue (steeply priced at $300). I tried out the Sony TV and the Logitech box,” Pogue reports. “This much is clear: Google TV may be interesting to technophiles, but it’s not for average people. On the great timeline of television history, Google TV takes an enormous step in the wrong direction: toward complexity.”
Pogue reports, “It’s all customizable, unfamiliar and mostly baffling, and you don’t get a single page of instructions. (I learned how to use Google TV by shooting a fusillade of questions to the Google P.R. people — an option I’m guessing won’t be open to you.) …The problem with Google’s open approach, of course, is that it breeds inconsistency and chaos.”
Full review here.
MacDailyNews Take: Googlesoft. Half-baked and ill-conceived; end-users screwed.™
If you’re going to read just one related article, this is the one to read: Gartenberg: Google overshoots for input 1 on your TV while Apple TV smartly targets input 2 – September 07, 2010
Sounds like normal for Google and most of the current industry.
Sadly.
Just a thought,
en
More Tower of Babel.
Me, I’m going for a walk along the beach.
what a joke. GoogleTV pfffff
GarbleTV
These guys are supposed to have some of the greatest technical minds working there. How do they not get it. Keep it simple stupid. Same concept that built their entire business
The same turd spoiling your mobile phone experience pollutes your living room.
Technophiles my arse! A real technophile is surely someone who appreciates elegant, innovative and imaginative technology. Android fans and their Linux-fellating geek brethren just like technology to be ugly and pointlessly complicated so they can feel like real men and revel in their own perceived intelligence when sifting through the myriad problems created by derivative, poorly-thought-out and ill-executed crap. Bah!
And breathe….
PHDs are into complexity. It justifies all those years of work.
Ordinary people are not into complexity.
Is Google missing a part of product design?
I noted “Is Google missing a part of product design?”
Truth is, they are missing at least 2 parts: universal products and ease-of-use.
Given the nature of the hundreds of books on innovation, invention, product & industrial design, it seems the PHDs don’t read. Instead, they think and talk to each other.
I have access the web on my PS3 connected to my HDTV and hardly ever use it. The problem is twofold.
The first problem stems from the fact that you really a totally open computer with a lot of software options so it can be used as a multi-functional tool.
On the PS3 I can’t copy and paste, or video record part of the screen, or run a spreadsheet, or tweak some part of the OS, or burn a cd, or probe wifi signals with KisMAC or tons of other things we all take for granted with a full fledged open computer.
The same problem arises with the iPad, it lacks a lot of open functionality to be able to morph according to what the user needs. Of course jail breaking the device then opens it up, but opens oneself to rogue code by shady sources.
Second problem the GoogleTV will fail for the same reason the AppleTV (the old one, check your history) failed, people don’t sit close to a TV, rather they sit back and share the TV viewing with others.
Viewing text on a computer screen requires a close up and highly concentrated amount of pixels on a 15″ or screen. HDTV’s have 1080, but the pixels are bigger for a larger screen meant to be viewed across the room so viewing text close up is all jagged.
The only way I’ve seen the Internet work with a TV is by using projection and or a 100″ screen with high amount of pixels, higher than 1080, at that point the text is readable from across the room. Quite a expensive option for most people.
It’s worth going to full article to see the Sony remote for this. OMFG FAIL. Sony makes a ton of good gadgets, but this one is fscking miserable. Bigger than a smartphone, but smaller than a real keyboard, it appears to be designed so that there is no comfortable way to type on this thing except for hunt and peck. Awesome.
Meanwhile, AppleTV. Smartphone remote or iPad remote. Nice.
That said, too bad Google TV is such a bitch. The more good devices for streaming TV, the sooner the current model gets broken. The funny thing is the cable could have delivered all this stuff earlier, but instead of figuring out that they could seamlessly segue to the next business model, they were typical myopic suits and crapped out the turd that is “On Demand”. At least they aren’t quite as stupid as the music industry.
Yeah, didn’t see that one coming…
“Hit tab. Tab twice. Or something.” “Are you clicking?”
It’s too bad Google doesn’t have a Verizon to artificially inflate the popularity of this particular Android product line.
And LOL @ listing content that’s blocked by the networks. It’s becoming the Google way to enable connections to the offerings of others without gaining a whiff of their consent.
http://themacadvocate.com/2010/10/22/networks-to-google-wah-wah/
And let’s not forget that Google has ZERO CUSTOMER SERVICE for ANY OF THEIR PRODUCTS! There is not a single Google product where you can talk to a human being about it. Google is absolutely, hands-down, the worst company in the entire tech industry. At least Microsoft and Dell have Indians you can talk to for tech support.
“Fragmented”
I waited and waited for Google TV gadgets to come out. It sounded in the rumors exactly like what I wanted. Pretty much all the lead up to the release of the devices indicated it would have a DVR built in. For the rumored prices, it better…
…and then the Logitech Revue (and Sony GTV) came out without a DVR. For $300+. Um…no? Then the content blocking started.
I ordered a Roku and began looking into an HTPC again.
Out of curiosity I played with both devices in Best Buy when they got the displays set up. The Sony remote is just ridiculous and the devices themselves weren’t impressive at all. The Logitech wasn’t much better and choked on TWiT.tv on Justin.tv. Yeah, no.
I prefer to call it Microogle
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Google TV is old Web TV all over again, and nobody wants it!
Pogue is correct, but Google may nevertheless prevail. Complexity and crappy interface didn’t stop Windows from taking over the desktop. American idiots never learned to program their VCRs, but they bought a crapload of them. Consumers (those people who have no mission in life but to buy what has been advertised to them) have been spending millions on High-Def televisions, but only a small percentage of them are smart enough to even feed the monitor a high-definition signal. So it won’t be too hard for Google to pull the ruse on the sheeple.
It’s all about the content. If Google uses its cash pile to buy (or buy off) top studios and live sports contacts, then GOOG will make out fine, even with crappy overpriced products. It already owns the low-end of the video market: on the Apple site, the top OS X downloads include #7 Flip4Mac and #8 Silverlight, so there must be a lot of kids watching poor-quality online videos. Thanks to search and marketing hooks, Google is making a few cents off of every one, even those not on YouTube.
Of course, none of these streaming appliances are true high definition. If they can’t outperform the video quality of BluRay, then the high-end home theatre crowd would be wise to skip these streaming gadgets.
Im not saying this because im a Apple fan but i think Steve was right when he Said users dont want to run Apps on their TV because thet dont want another computer. I feel the same way. Of course all the geeks will dissagree but Google TV is mainly for them.
Everything Google feels like beta at best, alpha at worst.
And it will never change – the Google model has no room for taking anything to completion, for providing any finesse. Already many Google launches have fizzled and been withdrawn, and that will continue. Laughable that so many geeks put so much faith in the money-grubbing Google.
Google is an advertising company, not tech.