2014 was being heralded as the year for Geeky TV to make a fight back. Google considers the first and second attempts at creating a successful Google TV platform a failure — the allure coming from the name alone wasn’t enough to wow consumers into using it. That’s understandable too because there are so many TV’s out there these days that range in price, picture quality, brand, and features. It is hard for a company like Google to bring out a complete television that not only works fantastically with Google software, but delivers a good and up to todays standard with screen resolution and brand quality at the same time. It’s easy to see how that price will quickly balloon out to unfavorable territory.
The solution could be to bring out Android TV as software that works with existing television sets of the people’s choice. From there, the Mountain View guys will work with the OEM on partnerships where the Android software will run on seamlessly. That leaves the end users with a TV just like they want in the first place, coupled with Android software that will let people have access to the Google Play Store. From there, they can download apps and games, plus get dibs on film subscriptions from Hulu and Netflix.
It’s a remedy that doesn’t sound too convincing. After all, we have seen Android gaming boxes released already and after a few weeks nobody had any interest in them. Furthermore, we already know a Smart TV has the capabilities to stream movie content direct from sources such as Netflix and Hulu, so what are we getting here?
So far, for the year that was predicted by many to be a big shootout between Apple and Google in the TV sector has been nothing of the sort. It’s hard to see the Cupertino guys coming up with either because we know they are working hard on a flagship smartphone iPhone 6, and a new phablet to enter the business, music streaming ideas after acquiring Beats and potential new iPad’s. Some are even suggesting another budget replacement to concur the mid-range market after people didn’t take to the iPhone 5C concept.
Anyhow, we won’t know real details until it is officially unveiled at the Google I/O event that is being held on the 25th and 26th of June later this month. People can attend the I/O and walk around, or they can sit at home and watch it all unfold from their lounge rooms by watching it streaming online. That is what I have done every year for the last few years and it is a great place to watch it all unfold. You get lots of interviews with people in the know, and it’s a great way to learn about what the developers have in mind for us.
The good news is that we have a possible release coming up for this and as always that will be exciting. Moreover, Android has a knack for making cheap operating system’s and we know that can extend into the TV side of things as it did already with the Chromecast. If they can produce the goods, therefore, the cheap price then, it might not have to do too much to be successful.