Google lifts veil on Google TV, WebM
Connected Planet- Google formally announced its long-anticipated foray into Android-based TV developments with Google TV, as well as an open-source online video project,WebM, during the Google I/O conference in San Francisco this week. The moves demonstrate Google’s increasing interest in bringing Internet-like openness to the pay TV realm at the same time it is looking to help the rogue world of online video gain more respectability by improving overall content quality.
The Google TV effort initially involves partners Intel, Logitech, Sony, Dish Network and Best Buy, though the company stressed the software’s open-source nature ensures that any company can riff on it. The software will be commercially available in the fall on a line of Sony BluRay players and Dish DVRs to be sold at Best Buy along with a Logitech wireless remote and keyboard. Google also suggested the software will be built into set-top boxes and TVs, though further details were unclear. Google TV is built on the current 2.1 version of Android being used in some Android phones, such as the Motorola Droid, and also uses the Google Chrome browser for search.
During the conference’s second-day keynote Thursday, Rishi Chandra, project manager for Google TV, led a sometimes-glitchy demonstration of the new Android software, which intends to provide better navigation of online video resources to be viewed on traditional TV screens. Chandra said current navigation solutions for a hybrid video environment have been left wanting on the Internet video side, so Google’s answer was to develop a way of using the TV remote to simultaneously search for both TV and Internet video content from a single programming source. Alternatively, viewers can search for a specific TV program and will be presented with all the “sources”— both TV channels and Internet destinations such as network TV Web sites, Amazon and Hulu — presenting both first-run and re-run versions of the program, as well as other video content related to that program.
The new software also allows such capabilities as hybrid picture-in-picture environments using traditional TV and Internet content sources, as well as automated language translation features. In addition, sharing content between Android mobile phone and Google TV-equipped appliances and using Android mobile phones to remotely search for TV content appear to be among future functions.
During the course of Thursday’s demonstration, the system appeared to work haltingly at several points, which Chandra attributed to cell phone signals interfering with the remote.
The idea of Android software for the TV enviornment long has seemed the next logical step for the operating system that has taken the mobile industry by storm, and Google reportedly has been dabbling in this area via a trial with satellite TV from Dish Network. More recent reports all but confirmed that the Google TV Android user interface would be unveiled at this week’s developers conference. The open-source TV development comes at a time when the Federal Communications Commission is looking for ways to open up the set-top box environment.
The Google TV announcement came one day after the company made another major video move by announcing WebM, an online video publishing format with open-source codecs that will compete with H.264 for supporting HTML5 video content.
The WebM Project was formally announced by Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, during this morning’s keynote, and in addition to Google, it involves cooperation from browser firms Mozilla and Opera, more than three dozen Web video publishers and other companies, such as Skype, Qualcomm, Brightcove, Digital Rapids and MIPS Technologies.
The new format uses VP8 and Ogg Vorbis video and audio encoding technologies that came into Google’s hands via the company’s acquisition of On2, Pichai said. He added that video encoded with VP8 will be available today on Google-owned YouTube. Google’s Chrome browser currently supports H.264, a license-based MPEG technology, and the company said that encouraging online video publishers to move to a royalty-free alternative to H.264 will be better for the success of online video in the long run.
Between Google TV and WebM, the Internet giant appears to be pushing a fast-growing but difficult-to-navigate online video sector into the mainstream light, so consumer electronics firms and TV service providers can help consumers take better advantage of a broadening array of content types and sources.
The GoogleTV and online video announcements also take aim at Apple and that company’s Apple TV offerings and use of other online video encoding schemes. Yet, the Smart Tv and WebM announcements were overshadowed to some extent by some revelatory acquisition news: Google said it is acquiring Simplify Media, an effort that will likely result in Google and its Android market becoming a more direct competitor to Apple’s iTunes
