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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Google TV is coming to 10,000 lucky developers

Google TV is now available in Best Buy and Sony Style stores across the nation, as well as online through Amazon.com. We’re excited that consumers are finally taking these out of the box and have been hearing a lot of positive early feedback. And while people may think that Google TV is great now, we can’t wait for them to see what’s coming.



First and foremost, as with Android for mobile, we’ll continually push new system updates with new features and bug fixes as they become available. But just as important, we are focusing our efforts on empowering the developers of the world to make Google TV an even better experience, through websites that have been built with the TV screen in mind.



For users, better-looking and more interesting websites means that the overall Google TV experience is even better. We want to encourage a new generation of TV developers to come forward to make this vision a reality. Which is why, over the next few weeks, we’re planning to give away 10,000 Google TV devices to help developers start building for TV.



This morning, we gave away more than 3,000 Google TV devices to attendees of the Adobe MAX conference. Additionally, we’ll be reaching out to thousands of web developers in the Google Code community to offer them a free device. Finally, if you are a professional web developer who wants to help make the Google TV experience even better and you don’t happen to fall into one of those two groups, please submit an entry to our Google TV Web Developer Promotion and include a short summary about the type of interesting website your company would like to create or optimize for Google TV. We’re planning to select 2,500 winners from those entries to receive a free Google TV device.



We can’t wait to see the new sites people will build. Until then, check out some of the latest Spotlight sites that have just launched on Google TV. A few of our favorites include Net-A-Porter, which lets you watch runway videos and shop for high fashion; Meegenius, a place where you can read and customize children’s books; TuneIn, a personal radio for your TV; and The Onion which always gives us a good laugh.



As we’ve always said, the coolest thing about Google TV is that we don’t even know what the coolest thing about it will be. The experience is in the hands of its users and developers, and everyone is invited. Come play.


Update: To clarify, this giveaway is only for U.S based developers. We hope to make Google TV available in other markets soon.


Posted by Amanda Surya, Google TV Developer Relations Team


Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Announcing the Sony Internet TV and Sony Internet TV Blu-Ray Player

We're excited to announce that Sony has revealed details of the much anticipated Sony Internet TV powered by Google TV, including a range of sizes, retail availability, and pricing. As an added bonus for people who would like to get the Google TV experience without buying a new TV, Sony has also unveiled the Sony Internet TV Blu-ray Player.

We've been hard at work with both the Sony and Logitech teams for the past few months and are looking forward to your feedback on these new devices. Please join us on Twitter or Facebook and let us know what you think.

- Posted by Jeff Lu, Google TV Engineer


Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Announcing the Logitech Revue with Google TV

The momentum keeps building for Google TV. Hot on the heels of our recent announcement about our content partners for the launch, our friends at Logitech have revealed a host of details about the Logitech Revue with Google TV. In a blog post, they have detailed pricing and hardware specs for the Revue and have added information about various compatible accessories (two remote controls, a video camera, and compatible Android/iOS apps).

This is just the beginning of the adventure and we’re excited to be working with Logitech, who bring three decades of experience building best-in-class computer and TV peripherals. With one remote control you can now intuitively access almost all your TV, DVR, web, and digital media content on the best screen in the house.













Posted by Peter Sherman, Product Marketing Manager, Google TV

Monday, October 4, 2010

Here comes Google TV

It’s been almost five months since we introduced Google TV to the world at Google I/O, and today we’re happy to give you an update on our progress. For those who haven’t yet heard of it, Google TV is a new way to think about TV: it’s a platform that combines your current TV programming and the open web into a single, seamless entertainment experience.

One of our goals with Google TV is to finally open up the living room and enable new innovation from content creators, programmers, developers and advertisers. By bringing Google Chrome and access to the entire Internet, you can easily navigate to thousands of websites to watch your favorite web videos, play Flash games, view photos, read movie reviews or chat with friends—all on the big screen.

Since our announcement, we’ve been overwhelmed by interest from partners on how they can use the Google TV platform to personalize, monetize and distribute their content in new ways. Most of these partner sites already work with Google TV, but many are choosing to further enhance their premium web content for viewing on the television. Today, we’re excited to announce several of these content partners.
  • Turner Broadcasting has been hard at work optimizing some of their most popular websites for viewing on Google TV, including TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, available anytime through Google TV.
  • NBC Universal has collaborated with Google TV to bring CNBC Real-Time, an application that allows you to track your favorite stocks and access news feeds while enjoying the best financial news from CNBC directly on the TV screen.
  • HBO will bring access to hundreds of hours of programming to Google TV with HBO GO. Authenticated subscribers will soon be able to access all of their favorite HBO content on-demand in an enhanced website for Google TV.
  • NBA has built NBA Game Time, an application that lets you follow game scores in real-time and catch up on the latest highlights from your favorite team in HD.
In addition, we’ve partnered with some of the leading premium content providers to bring thousands of movie and TV titles, on-demand, directly to your television. Amazon Video On Demand offers access to over 75,000 titles for rental or purchase, and Netflix will offer the ability to instantly watch unlimited movies and TV shows, anytime, streaming directly to the TV.

We have also been working with some leading technology and media companies to optimize their content for Google TV, including news sites like The New York Times and USA Today; music sites like VEVO, Pandora and Napster; information networks like Twitter; and online networks like blip.tv. And with YouTube Leanback, we can offer the best experience for you to watch your favorite viral videos and personalized channels on the television.

You can get a sneak peek of some of these apps in the video below:



This is just the beginning. Over the next few weeks, you can expect to hear from more sites that are enhancing their web content for the television. If you’re interested in learning more about how to optimize your website for viewing on Google TV, please visit our developer page.

Today we also launched a new website that provides more information about these apps and all of the other great features of Google TV.

We’re really excited about the enthusiasm surrounding the platform and can’t wait for it to reach your living room. Devices powered by Google TV will launch this month, so look out for more information in the next few weeks from Sony on its Internet TV and Blu-Ray player, and Logitech on its companion box.

Posted by Ambarish Kenghe (AK), Developer Product Manager, Google TV

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