Once upon a time (more like 2010), there was Google TV where the software giant attempts to invade the living room entertainment space. The then-CEO Eric Schmidt even said that within a few months, their partners like Logitech and Sony will be incorporating the Google TV system into their televisions, disc players, and set-top boxes. Logitech did dabble in this through its Revue set-top box, but ultimately Google TV just fizzled due to lack of support from hardware makers and content providers alike.
But Google ain’t giving up that easily. At Google I/O 2014, it unveiled Android TV, its next attempt at complementing our TV-consumption experience. Google did release the Chromecast last year which did pretty well, and Android TV supports GoogleCast in its entirety, plus its own unique features.
On the GoogleCast side, you no longer need to be connected on the same WiFi network to be able to ‘cast’ content on your Chrome browser or smartphone to Chromecast and Android TV. GoogleCast support has been extended on Android, Chrome, and even iOS so more apps and content can be pushed. Soon, you can even do Android screen mirroring. Update (July 10th): it’s here!
During ‘standby’ mode, you can even use GoogleCast to display a backdrop using your Google+ photos; think of it like a screensaver for your television set.
Google has provided just one Android SDK for all form factors to help developers easily make apps not only for the Android smartphone OS, or Android Wear, but for Android TV as well.
The company no longer tries to make its TV platform have smartphone features like it did with Google TV, but instead tones it down so that it will have a better lean back experience. For starters, it’ll support voice search, and you can control Android TV from a number of devices including on your Android Wear watch. Apps like Netflix and Hulu will be presented in a large and easy-to-navigate tiles that is remote-friendly.
But perhaps the most important and interesting feature of Android TV is its ability to play Android games using a separate gamepad. Because these games are Android apps, gamers could also play multiplayer games where one player is on Android TV, and the other is playing on an Android tablet/phone.
Until now, many set-top boxes (like the Apple TV) only does multimedia, and I’ve always wished for set-top boxes that support third party apps like games. This is one of the reasons why consoles like the PlayStation and Xbox are so popular, because it does both games and media quite well. Lately, Amazon’s Fire TV is the closest to fulfilling that wish of mine, but it looks like Android TV may be a great contender in this space too, provided if it’s able to get it out to consumers, and that developers could easily port their games to work with Android TV.
As always, Google is also promising that in 2015, a bunch of smart TVs from manufacturers like Sharp and Sony will run Android TV. However, knowing what happened to Google TV, we’ll believe it when we see it.
For more information on Android TV, visit http://www.android.com/tv/.
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