Why Google TV is fundamentally flawed | Hacker News Reader

Why Google TV is fundamentally flawed

theexciter.com

9 pointsthekguy24 comments

"Imagine instead if the remote for a storage, OS and video-decoding “media box” was an iPad(-like) tablet on which you did all the interactions and the TV simply mirrored those when you where browsing, or presented the results of such interactions, like playing a show from a playlist you just created."

I think the author missed the part where they were controlling the TV using their Nexus Ones. Go watch the presentation again, they're already doing exactly that. You can't complain a product is flawed if it is already doing exactly what you want it to do!

Edit: Logitech already has iPhone and Android apps for their box: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/20/logitechs-google-tv-compa...

The iPad would also be an excellent adjunct device. As the price of such devices fall, the interface possibilities will become readily available.

Also, just having an Apple/Front Row style remote with a menu driven interface enables a whole lot.

The big attraction is the data. iAd style advertisements on these boxes will be a treasure trove of consumer data.

Kind of a weak argument.

The people that are working on these devices aren't idiots and they realize that input is a problem.

Many cable operators are exploring the use of smart phones as remote (in fact the Google TV demo used and android phone as its data entry device).

Vizio TV's are putting keyboards in their remotes as well.

What most people designing apps for TV realizes is that apps that require heavy user input don't work well so they instead design apps that work around these restrictions. Its a challenge but not one that is insurmountable. No one is trying to turn your TV into a PC replacement they're just trying to extend its capabilities a bit.

Right. Look at what Apple does with the very simple 6 button remote. The trick is to come up with the right contexts and choices to cover the easy 80% use cases.

Google TV's developer page notes the importance of the user being able to navigate with only five buttons (up, down, left, right and enter) here http://www.google.com/tv/developer/#navigation-is-critical.

So this post seems a bit uninformed to me. I think google knows what they're doing.

This article "debunks" Google TV for no other reason that it isn't the cool way dynamic web based TV should be as the author imagines it.

Title is sensational at best.

I have been using my Android phones as my remote for my Windows 7 media center for quite some time. I don't see why this wouldn't be possible with Google TV...

I'm skeptical also. Do people really want a search driven TV experience? TV is the opposite of the Internet in many ways. I think people want content pushed at them or presented in a buffet style interface. From the demo video Google TV looks to be very focused on search instead. The other thing that made me skeptical was Google presenting the problem of a program being on multiple channels. My cruddy cable DVR was able to figure this out years ago. TIVO has always done a very good job at it. What's the problem there?

My problem with them is data entry, which google wants to let me take care of with my droid (and I'd love to). I have used search on a cable box exactly once because it was as much of a chore to enter the query and sort through the spectacularly awful search results as to scroll through all the channels trying to find what I wanted. And yet, every time I actually have something in mind I want to watch, I wish I could use an easy and decent search function. Then theres the possibility of hulu style "channels" which still give a buffet, but you get to stick to the sushi section of the buffet instead of having no discernible organization.

Lots of what google is trying to do has been done poorly and in half-measures before. A good implementation with all of them together has a ton of potential.

This guy clearly didnt watch the demo or read the developer docs.

And, I DO want a search based TV interface. I hate having to scroll through several screens to find the show that I want.

And the search interfaces that STBs do have are terrible, you can barely search by name, and can't search by actor or anything like that.

But being able to scroll through a list is much better than having to watch a scrolling list and having to wait for the thing you want to scroll by.

I know on my STB, the list that the search returns is just the title of the show (for instance, 30 Rock). It gives me nothing more than the title, so I have to click around till I find the one that I want

I agree with the post in that in the long history of the "TV-Internet convergence" starting with MS's WebTV in the 80s most people viewed the TV as a tool to browse the web. That's why they failed because, as most people know, the TV watching and Web browsing experiences are quite different.

Then, there's the problem of the input device. Ever enter a movie name for search using the TiVo remote, AFAIK the best currently available? It's a pain. Now, one thing Google TV gets absolutely right is that your phone will be your secondary interaction device for your TV.

The real interesting question here is: will applications on the Google TV set-top-box be able to access the tuner and EPG functions. TiVo has a nice SDK for their boxes for years now, the reason you never heard of it because they don't allow apps to access these features out of fear from content providers. If you can write Android apps running on the STB that can access the video stream, now that would be super, but I don't expect to see this anytime soon.

"will applications on the Google TV set-top-box be able to access the tuner and EPG function"

Only of the TV and this would only work with "Over the air" tv. In the US most of us receive our TV and guide via our cable or satellite box and tune via that mechanism. Google TV and competing products have no easy way of accessing that data (the guide data and tuning).

There's some hacky ways of doing it but nothing really integrated.

I know :-) I work on developing new TV experiences for STBs for one of the two major STB manufacturers in the US. What I meant was: currently the Google TV box is just a means to get Internet content, called "over the top" in Cable TV parlance (because it's not controlled by the cable companies). If Google TV just does this, it'll be doomed like other systems because it will not be able to compete with cable STBs.

An interesting thing can happen if Google does partner with a cable provider to also add cable TV functionality to the box. I heard they've already partnered with Time-Warner for trials. That would be another TiVo-like system, but, of course, much more open. I see little chance of them persuading the cable guys to let their apps fiddle with the content, though. But who knows, it's Google.

Dish Network is listed as a partner and will be releasing a STB with this technology. If that goes well it won't take long for other providers to jump on board too.

That's just not really the case.

There's almost no way this makes it into a terrestrial cable box outside of a few trial markets. Or with a few small cable providers. I say this as someone who spent 4 years working for a large cable co building software that runs on cable boxes.

There's a bunch of reasons but here's two.

1. The large cable co's aren't generally going to deploy software controlled by a 3rd party. Microsoft has spent years banging their head against the wall that is the large telco with little success.

2. Cable already has a mature cable box focused software stack standard called tru2way which is already getting more traction then Android likely ever will in cable STB space.

The cable space is not normal and they don't make what appear to be rational sw decisions to the internet crowd.

Dish is an outlier and doing everything they can to compete but I wounldn't even count on them going into wide deployment with this.

This will live on CE devices, not cable and satellite STBs.

I have a Hauppauge WinTV HVR-2250 and Windows 7, which I use with the cheapest basic cable package Comcast has -no STB, basically just analog and HD Clear QAM of the local channels. Upon installation, Windows scans your signal and asks your ZIP code and service provider, and that's it- the EPG is set up and works great. Hardly what I'd call 'hacky'. If Microsoft can maintain a database and have it work flawlessly, I don't see why Google couldn't...

Getting EPG data is not a big deal, but may be costly if you plan to sell services based off it, e.g. a single Tribune (EPG data monopoly in the US) EPG data access costs around $10K. However, if you are developing apps for non-commercial purposes, e.g. open source, you can get this data for $20/year at http://www.schedulesdirect.org/.

The real problem is to access the video stream. Currently this is viewed to be illegal (see the lawsuit in 2001 that pretty much sank ReplayTV, http://www.eff.org/cases/newmark-v-turner).

I'm guessing Microsoft has gotten a licensing deal with Tribune to get and share the EPG data for Windows Media Center. As far as the video stream, I wonder then how Microsoft/Hauppauge get away with it?

You're only getting access to the unencrypted channels. (and generally I believe only SD?)

The vast majority of Comcast's channels and content can't be accessed without a cable card or cable box.

Yes- I'm getting SD analog channels + HD Local Channels (which the FCC mandates they carry in the clear), although there are CableCard PC tuners out there, and from what I've heard, CableCards are available from Comcast (I just refuse to pay $50/mo, or whatever it is, to get the digital package). I also use my Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender to watch stuff I've DVR'd in the bedroom. I don't see how this is really doing anything different than what ReplayTV was doing. Maybe it's just that there aren't enough people doing it to have drawn the ire of the media companies...

Here's how I imagine Google TV when I turn it on for the first time:

"This program is not available in your geographical location"

This looks like an article written to match a desired headline. The control device is hardly 'fundamental' to the concept of a web-enabled TV.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com