Google guns for Apple TV
Real-world device testing begins
Google is working on an in-home entertainment gadget able to stream content from the internet - or, at least, it's testing such a device in employees' homes.
The online advertising company asked the US Federal Commmunications Commission in December 2011 if it could test "an entertainment device" with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on board "outside the laboratory environment".
Little else is known about the device, but it's not hard to envisage a Google alternative to the Apple TV, Western Digital WD TV Live and Roku set-top streamers, all of which present net-hosted content on your TV screen.
Google has its music service and, through YouTube, a video on demand offering too. What it lacks, perhaps, is a unified brand along the lines of Apple's iTunes to bring them together, but maybe it considers that consumers are happy with its sub-brands.
Either way, it provides the company with yet another way of monitoring what kind of entertainment you like and using that data to make sure you and yours are fed with appropriate ads when you're browsing at home.
But it's not merely media that Google has its eye on. Insiders cited by the New York Times say the company views the box as the start of a line of products that will take on home automation roles too, managing lights, heating and appliances as well as entertainment equipment.
There have been rumours that Apple has similar notions about expanding its set-top box line into a broader 'digital home' control centre. ®
COMMENTS
Same here. I have 2. 1 upstairs on the projector and 1 on the main TV downstairs. The downstairs one is used daily for Netflix and TV series. I stream pics to it too from my phone if the folks are round.
Just because something is of no use _to you_ does not mean it is a joke.
Could it better? Definitely.
Is it good enough at the moment? Yes.
yes, massive joke - I use it everyday, and the media I can't stream to it I send to the PS3 instead. But the AppleTV is the device of preference because it's so much quicker to start up and begin playing that the PS3 is.
Sounds great
"You'll be able to turn on the lights after just 20 seconds of this ad"
"You're running low on milk, here's a list of shopping websites selling milk"
Plus soft-spoken messages from Google telling you what amazing discussions about Google+ you're missing out on by not logging into Google+.
Where do I sign up?
no thanks
for google to make money on this, they'll have to sell not only analytics on our tv watching patterns, but also bombard our screens with advertisments. no thanks.
plus, is this article seriously suggesting that YouTube is the video content that they going to be driving this product's roll out with? they'll need a lot more than 30 second clips of talking dogs or kids off their heads on novocane.
Where have you been for the last couple of years Tony?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/20/google_tv_annnouncement/
