Another new service from Google has just been announced: Google TV. According to the official Google blog "Google TV uses search to give you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies".

The way it works is this: you buy a google TV compatible device - these are televisions, blue ray players or set-top boxes with an internet connection. Some devices will feature wireless internet built in to avoid cabling issues. Using this equipment, you can browse the google TV search facilities to find content that you are interested in. This could be Youtube videos, syndicated content or information feeds. I'm sure some bright spark will think of adding a webcam into a large screen TV turning it into a science fiction-like video phone or video conferencing tool (hey, I just invented that!). I would think that Google TV enabled devices will incorporate USB ports too to allow keyboards, flash drives, webcams and other peripherals. (possibly USB 3).

The Google TV devices will run on a flavour of the android platform with Google Chrome, and Google has already invited developers to design applications that would fit well in the environment.

Internet TV is nothing new. I developed applications for ondigital internet televisions in 2000. The problem here is that they were slow, and the restrictions of the PAL screen resolution: 720×576 split into two interlaced fields of 288 lines means that the usable area is very small. Couple that with the fact that you need to make the text quite large to be readable, made the experience comparible to using a smart phone today. The take up of internet television was quite poor. Many people who wanted internet access at the time would rather have a desktop, which can also fulfill other functions. Needless to say, the technology was a bit ahead of it's time, and digital TV more or less put the last nail in the coffin of internet TV around 2004.

What might help Google TV now, is that the internet and network speeds are much faster, the screen resolution of HDTVs is higher, and interest in using the internet is much higher now that it ever was.

Watch the video below for an introduction to the google TV service: