Google TV via Sony’s Blu-ray Player – A Hands-On Review
Bill Niemeyer, Senior Analyst
October 22, 2010
The Sony and Logitech Google TV devices have hit the stores, and I've had a week of in-home use with the Sony Google TV Blu-ray player. I got it the old fashioned way, by walking into a Sony Style store last Friday and buying it. The store was covered in signage for Google TV and upcoming Sony TV commercials were playing on the big screens.
Impressions after a week of use? I still think Google TV is going to be a game changer (note the use of "going"). The platform is very powerful and presents a significant new use case. A few of the applications give you an idea of Google TV’s capabilities, as well as provide great utility. When video is encoded correctly for Flash HD 720P or 1080P, it looks great and plays smoothly.
Two apps in particular rose above the rest, getting it right the first time: the Twitter and NBA apps. In the case of Twitter, the designers recognized they would be displaying on a big-screen HDTV and created an attractive and functional app. Couple that with “picture-in-picture” (PIP) for your TV feed and Twitter users have found nirvana. In terms of the NBA app, it is a real-time feed of scores for all NBA games, with the ability to dive down into two levels of detail for each game. Couple that with TV PIP and access to well-encoded game highlight videos, and it becomes a must-have for NBA fans.
Other apps and sites, however, fall far short of expectations, plagued by poor user interfaces (no awareness of “Design for HD TV 101”), lousy video encoding, or a lack of basic QA (sites simply don’t work). Yet these are “human learning curve” issues, meaning the apps and sites simply need to be optimized, just as they are on the Web.
The "out-of-box" experience? Fairly effortless and very quick. The Sony box was easy to set up, though I did get stuck on a black screen which was fixed by a power switch cycle. In addition, I skipped over the IR blaster setup (to control cable box and TV) so I cannot speak to its ease of set up or use. One specific nit: the Sony box does not like the HDMI feed from my ancient Comcast STB (no audio) but is fine with my HD TiVo.
How about the alpha use case for any net-connected TV device, Netflix streaming? On Google TV, the Netflix UI is unremarkable, similar to that offered on other OTT devices. You can review your queue but are unable to search/discover content. That said, video playback was seamless, with no pauses or buffering (which is not the case on other Netflix-enabled OTT devices). The video quality ultimately depends on how it was encoded by Netflix (the HD movies, for example, looked quite nice).
When used properly, Google TV can do a remarkable job of combining Net delivered apps, HD Flash video, and TV. Already in the past week three new apps have appeared in the Spotlight menu: CNN (respectable UI giving access to well-encoded videos), Net-A-Porter.com (decent UI giving access to well-done fashion videos with a sidebar of on-screen links to Google TV-optimized e-commerce for the clothes), and KQED (a SF PBS station offering a well-designed UI with links to full-length HD episodes of locally-produced shows).
As to the Sony hardware itself, I do have one issue: the Sony mini "chiclet" keyboard/controller is uncomfortable to use for any degree of typing (e.g., using Twitter). The Logitech keyboard, on the other hand, seems to be a good alternative and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on it.
So, after one week of use, I remain convinced that Google TV will be a game changer. As to the pace of that change and the rate of consumer adoption, it ultimately depends on how fast the content developers can learn to use the platform correctly. Some clearly already have, and given the frictionless business path (no Google agreements required) to launching Flash sites for Google TV, we are bound to see rapid deployments of new content providers eager to get their HD video on TVs.
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