Logitech Revue and Google TV

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Today is a lucky day for me, I got a free Google TV from Google for developing web applications for it. This is the first time I’ve played with the Google TV. The set up process of the Google TV takes about 15 mins, including set up the wireless network, a TV source and set up the Logitech Revue controller to be a TV remote. The process takes longer than setting up the Apple TV because as you might already know, the Google TV connects to your TV source also. However, I’m not gonna talk about that feature, but I’ll talk about the internet and app capabilities in Google TV. But before everything, I should tell you that I’m writing this blog on the Logitech Revue controller (which is essentially a keyboard with a trackpad plus some special Android-specific buttons).

The Chrome web browser on the Google TV works pretty well, however, even though Google always promote Flash (Adobe Flash) on their mobile platform, I found that it performs very slowly. I found that navigating around the browser might be a little bit confusing to alot of people because there’s no address bar. The only way you can enter the URL of the website that you want to navigate to is to press on a “Search” button on the controller and that will display the “URL/Search bar” on top of the current Google Chrome web page. I assume that if you were a Chrome user, you might already know this because Chrome uses the search bar as the URL bar also.

There are about 10 applications that comes with the Google TV, and most of them are not apps that’s been written for Google TV. Some of the apps are: Amazon Video on Demand, Netflix, Pandora, and Twitter. Pandora and Twitter are the two apps that are very obvious that they just use the Android phone version of the app to run on the Google TV. Twitter crashes the first time I set it up, and it never recovers. Up until now, I still can’t open Twitter app on my Google TV. Pandora works pretty well on the Google TV; however, it has a little bit of UI issue that I’ll show you in the picture below. The Netflix application is very disappointing compared to what Apple offers in its Apple TV. Netflix app on the Google TV only allows you to play movies that you already have in your Instant Queue. You cannot browse the movie catalog, or add more movies into your download queue. I haven’t played much with Amazon VOD but to me it doesn’t seem like an application, but just a link to Amazon.com website.

Moreover, the disappointment that I got from Google TV is that I cannot install applications from Android Market. I remember when I went to Google I/O this year (2010), Google told us that they’re gonna put the Market in Google TV and allow all Android apps to run on the device. However, this is not what we have in the Logitech Revue. Logitech actually shipped the device with its own “Logitech Media Player” application that can stream music and videos from your networked devices, or USB devices (the Logitech Revue comes with 2 USB ports). The manual doesn’t say what the app will work with, but I tested it with my iTunes and it definitely doesn’t work with iTunes.

So overall, I think Google TV Internet and application capabilities are less than what it probably aims for. However, for people who doesn’t want to connect your life with iTunes and Apple environment, this is the only viable alternative to the Apple TV.

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Here's the Pandora app on Google TV. You can see that the playing time got cut off to another line.


Here's twitter app crashing:

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 13, 2011 at 5:37 PM

    I have a Logitech Review with Google TV also and I haven't run into as many issues, I wonder if they had sent out some updated patches. I was one of the first to get a Logitech Review because I work at Dish Network and I also subscribe to the service. Google Chrome does take some getting used to but it is a great tool. Personally I love the Pandora Radio app. It's great when I want to have music in the whole house, I just turn on the surround sound and then I can focus working on stuff around the house. One of the key things about the Logitech Review is the fact that it does integrate with my service, so when I search for something it looks through my DVR, the program guide, and the internet. I'm excited to see where they take this and what apps will be available for Google TV.

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