Next week will see Sony showing off the first ever HDTV with integrated Google TV, meaning the Web has finally come to the best screen in the house, and TV and web have finally become one.

Which all sounds very nice, but it does leave one important question: just what is Google TV anyway?!

Google TV – Internet TV the way it should be

Internet TV has been a technology waiting for prime-time adoption for years, now, but so far, no-one seems to have been able to implement it in a way that consumers actually want to use. Even Apple tried with Apple TV which achieved as much success as every other Internet TV manufacturer.

So what makes Google TV so different? let’s look look at the highlights.

The Search Bar

The Google TV search bar could well become one of this decade’s iconic images, sitting there like a gateway to a new way of watching TV.

It is what is says on the tin – a search bar – , but when used in the context of TV it becomes something much more interesting.

For example, let’s say you search for Formula 1 – it’ll bring up details of the next race in Japan, plus the details of it sshowing on BBC1, plus any other Formula 1 shows coming up or recorded, as well as We links galore. Plus it’ll bring up any apps you have relating to F1 and also link to video on YouTube.

Alternatively, if you look up a programme series, such as CSI, it’ll link to relevant sites like IMDB and TV.com, where you can find out more details about the programme and its actors.

Apps

It seems everything has apps nowadays – I’m expecting my cooker to grow them before long – but with Google TV’s Android heritage, TV apps take on a whole new dimension of excitement.

Apps will be available from Pandora (streaming radio), CNBC, Napster, Amazon, Netflix and Google themselves, and with thousands already developing for Android phones and tablets, the leap to the big screen may come sooner than we think. Games, web apps, weather apps and more, plus innovative apps that use the TV & web combination will soon become a reality.

All Android apps that currently work on your Android smartphone will also work on Google TV (although some, such as the jogging app, might nto work quite so well when not placed in your pocket!)

The Web

Not only is the Web the fuel that drives Google TV, it’s there for you to browse – with full Flash support. We’ve had browsing before on TVs, mainly with consoles from the Nintendo Wii (torturous) to the PS3 (not bad but no Flash), and it sort-of works.

But with the power of Google behind it, sites will begin to offer TV-friendly versions of their sites in much the same way they do with mobile versions.

These new TV Websites can help making sofa browsing a reality and even take the web in a totally different direction.

In addition, Google TV will also also offer the regular Web too, with all the browsing you can handle from the house’s comfiest chair, plus the usual Web fun with Twitter and Facebook – and all picture in picture with live action.

Video On Demand

In addition to videos from YouTube, you can also stream video on Google TV from the likes of Netflix and Amazon, enabling you to watch films with just a simple click of the mouse.

While these Video On Demand (VOD) services won’t be available to us in the UK just yet, we do have VOD services of our own from major TV companies such as Sky, BBC, ITV, C4 and Five that may well be adapted for Google TV, plus the forthcoming YouView – the merged service of BBC/C4/Five/ITV – may well find a welcome in the G box.

Plus there’s always Web video too from YouTube and Google Video, and let’s not forget the BBC’s iPlayer.

Your TV’s new Homepage

With Google TV, your telly gets a homepage, which you can customise to your heart’s content. Kind of like an iGoogle for your TV, you can place apps, internet bookmarks, Electronic Programme Guides (EPGs), VOD queues – in fact anything you like.

This is very much in the Android mould of homescreen personalisation – let’s see if it’s per person, making the TV even more personal in a busy household.

Recording TV programmes with Google TV

Recording TV isn’t new, granted. But with Google TV you’re not restricted to recording TV from broadcast – put in what you want to watch and it’ll pull down other video sources too.

So say you want to record the very excellent Interpol playing their equally excellent music, Google TV will record shows tagged as Interpol, as well as placing links to online videos of Interpol – all in a smart queue, all without you having to trawl various channels and sites.

Smart, and something unique to Google TV.

Media Hub

Most media players can now hold their own as media hubs, showing films, photos and playing music from directly from your PC or a USB connection.

Google TV can also do all this, but because of its Web browser and Android app support, it also supports streaming music from major streaming radio services like Pandora and Napster. Plus if Android is anything to go by, it may only be a matter of time before Spotify makes an appearance on the platform (let’s face it, the app is already written), turning Google TV into an infinite jukebox.

The Coolest Remote

So surely a remote for this device is going to be huge – or frankly horrid to use if you don’t have a QWERTY keyboard?

Well, in addition to dedicated remotes from the likes of Logitech, your iPhone or Android phone can also be your full colour touchscreen remote control, fully customisable and never lost (unless you have a habit of losing your expensive phones). So it can be a simple or as full featured as you want, and you’ll already be used to inputting text into it.

Summary

There are even more features we haven’t covered, like watching video from your phone on the TV screen to setting up recording direct from the search bar – there’s just so much Google TV can do.

Sony will be debuting their Bravia GT1 HDTV next week, and Logitech have already announced their Revue set-top box, so more details like release dates and pricing will soon become clear.

Google TV is going to be something special and genuinely represents the next step that TV and the web have been waiting for.

One for the Christmas list Santa!

[Source: Google TV]

It’s not touch that’s Google TV’s revolutionary feature, though – it’s Google itself.

Allow me to explain!

Internet-equipped TVs and Set Top Boxes have been around years, but they’ve largely been rubbish, offering only a browser and a crude QWERTY-equipped remote control to type in your URL.

Unsurprisingly, they never caught on. They nearly did last year, with a raft of Internet-equipped TVs being launched that featured Yahoo! widgets (a series of simple apps such YouTube), but there was one problem with these TVs – you were largely stuck with the widgets that came with the set.

it was also very much a case of an Internet experience and a TV experience – there was no connection between the two, meaning that you were essentially paying for a browser on your TV.

Enter Google TV!

Google TV changes all that. Rather than tacking a browser onto a TV, they’ve integrated TV into a browser, and made the whole thing seamless.

For example, suppose you want to Tweet with your mates. Call up Twitter.com, read and send Tweets, and all the while, you can watch TV, as it appears as a little window in the corner.

More impressively, searching for content lets you search across TV channels and YouTube in the same listing. That’s what I mean by tightly coupling the Web and TV experiences – there is no differrence between the two. It’s the same interface, the same way of viewing the content – everything.

Extending Google TV

Now here’s the really cool part. Google TV will have an app store. So no longer are you stuck with the widgets and apps that come with the TV – you can download as many as you like.

Quite what these apps will be is anyone’s guess, but it’s going to be fascinating to see what will be prodcued.

A seamless sea of Google

Now here’s where it gets really interesting. Ten year ago, we got used to seeing Google when we were searching for things on the Web. Fast forward to 2007, and we were used to seeing Google when we searched, looked for places to go, watched videos and checked our email.

Two years ago, Google moved onto the desktop (with the Chrome browser) and into your hands (with Android).

So when I say a seamless sea of Google, that’s exactly what I mean – we see the company everywhere, and use it for many different things.

So now when see Google on our TV, we know what to expect, and the whole things feels so natural, it’s almost a wonder that all TVs don’t have Google TV.

Video of Sony’s Internet TV

If you don’t believe me, check out the video below of Sony’s new HDTV, which incorporates Google TV. See what I mean? Utterly natural!

Google TV will be hitting the shops before Christmas, but won’t really get started until next year. Which, coincidentally, is around the same time that the new Google tablets will start getting seriously popular!

The future of entertainment, it seems, is Google. Not bad for a search engine!

[Source: Engadget]

The main parts of the system are the rumoured iTunes-like music store for the usual preview and buying of digital music – not much new here. The other, clever part though is the idea of a cloud-based ‘digital locker’ for your other music.

Here you can upload tracks you already have and listen to them combined with your Google Music purchases anywhere you can gain access to the service. One of these places with most certainly be via an Android device, with this being the first cloud based service with user uploading – potentially extremely popular.

Apple could certainly replicate this, and to some degree will when it puts LaLa to work with streaming media, but it would go against their locked-in ethos and would require a large revamp of iTunes to accommodate uploading tracks to a user’s space.

Of course, Google’s reach is far further than Android, so we can expect to see this system on the various means of social interaction with Google (music recommendations through Buzz or screensavers while playing from Flickr for example or maybe even playing youtube as a part of your Google Music playlists), plus devices like the forthcoming Google TV will bring it into the front room.

Apple has had it quite easy for a while, with any challenges to their successful brands often falling by the wayside. But, as Android shows, when Google put their minds and their dollars to something, they can easily match the Infinity Loop inhabitants. I certainly wouldn’t want to be their rivals.

We all know that Google likes to have its fingers in all the pies, well they are now sticking their hands into an area of the home entertainment market coveted by Microsoft and Apple. Google really are taking no survivors; it would seem their company motto isn’t only “Don’t be evil” but also “World domination is a must”.

The Google Media Server can connect a PC to any device that supports Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), a set of computer network protocols that enable devices to share data across a home network. The server uses the Desktop Search to locate media files on the PC and on the Web. So basically all you need is a windows PC running Google Desktop and a UPnP-enabled device (e.g. video-game consoles PlayStation 3 from Sony and Xbox 360 from Microsoft, as well as Hewlett-Packard’s MediaSmart high-definition televisions). Once you have those you can then:

• Access videos, music, and photos stored on your PC
• View online picture albums
• Play your favorite YouTube videos as well as other online videos

I can hear Microsoft quaking in their boots (whether that is from fear or anger I can’t tell).

[Source:Google Blog]