Google TV Is Coming! Why You Should Care

Today, those forward thinking (and oft-maligned) geniuses at Google made a big announcement. BIG. It’s one of those things that could – and likely will be – the beginning of a new era in multimedia consumption. It won’t affect you today. And it probably won’t affect you six months from now. But in a year or two down the road, I can almost guarantee that it will affect each one of us in very profound ways.

Follow me here for a second…

Okay… so… multimedia consumption. What does that mean, exactly? Well, simply put, it means that we (being the modern, tech-savvy consumers we are) are consuming multiple forms of media each and every day. Iphones. Ipads. Ipods. Radios. All those gadgets and devices are pumping different sorts of information into our brains at virtually every hour during the day. But the fact is there are two undisputed behemoths of media that really dictate our daily lives, whether we like it or not

Since the advent of the internet, the computer has quickly risen to challenge the historical king of our attention in the household: the television. Many, many of us now spend as much or more time in front of a computer screen in a typical day than in front of a television screen. (How about you?) And although great strides have been made in recent years to somehow harness the power of both, and connect the two into an all-encompassing symbiotic media machine (remember the joke that was WebTV?), the computer and the television are still by and large separate devices, relegated to separate corners of our homes.

That’s not to say the two are mutually exclusive. Nikki and I connect our laptop to our HDTV pretty regularly. In fact, we use the laptop as the DVD player in our living room, and I’m sure lots of folks do the same. It’s easy enough once you figure out how to connect the HDMI cable and change the display settings on the laptop and find the right input on the TV and blah blah blah. But even at that, we’re basically turning our TV into a huge, expensive computer monitor. The two aren’t really functioning as one, in a harmonious yin-yang sort of way. One is just taking over the other.

So now comes Google TV. And like I said, it’s not going to revolutionize our TV/computing experiences right away… but given some time and some more development, man oh man does this thing look unbelievably cool.

The Google Game-Changer Is Coming.

You can do a search for “Google TV” and find out more. But stay with me here and I’ll hit some of the high points.

Google TV isn’t a specific device, but a software and hardware spec that can be “baked into all manner of gadgets, from standalone set-top boxes to the actual TVs themselves.”

Being Google, the centerpoint of Google TV is its search function. Imagine, if you will, a small search bar that appears at the top of your TV screen. Using a wireless keyboard or keyboard-like remote, you type in the name of a TV show. And Google TV searches across the TV spectrum and the internet, and finds and displays what you’re looking for.

Say you’re a fan of The Office (and if you’re not you should be). You type in The Office, and Google TV finds it on your local channel guide, and lets you record future episodes like a DVR. Not only that, Google TV will bring up results from sites like Hulu, where you can watch just about every episode of the office your heart desires. And Youtube, where you can watch blooper clips and outtakes from The Office. And NBC.com, where you can pull up a variety of Office-related material. Everything you ever wanted to know or see about The Office is right there at your fingertips, and displayed on your super-cool 55-inch LCD HDTV.

There’s that, plus the fact you also have full access to the internet too! So if you want, you can “split-screen” and watch your TV shows on one side, while you surf the web on the other. How’s that for convergence?

Check out this video, but be sure to read on. Because that ain’t the half of it.



Sounds cool, right? But here’s where the really cool part starts:

Google TV + Smartphones = Brilliant TV

Google TV will run on the Android platform. Yes, the same Android platform that many of you have on your Android phones from Verizon. Which means thousands of the same apps available to you on your phone will also be available on your TV! One example: Google demoed a very cool remote app running on an Android phone today: just say the name of a show you want to watch into your phone, and it’s entered automatically into the search bar on your TV. Yep. Just say "The Office" into your phone, and watch it come up on your TV. Far out, right?

Even better is the fact that Google is being very un-Apple like, and allowing developers open latitude to control Google TV on whatever platform they want. So will you be able to control your TV with your iPhone? And run iPhone apps on your TV? Quite possibly. And that’s very cool.

So with that, Google TV is not only attempting to combine the computer and the TV into one all-powerful home media hub, it’s bringing the power of your smartphone into the fold as well. So now, just think of all those creative minds out there who are coming up with all those cool apps for your phone. Thousands of ‘em every day. And imagine what they’ll be able to do with your TV.

So how can you get Google TV? It’ll be out there later this year. Google is partnering with Sony, which is baking it into a future line of TVs and Blu-Ray players. Dish Network will be doing the same with their boxes. Intel is making the chips to power it all. And a host of other companies are jumping on board as well.

Will it be worth buying right away? Probably not. Best to let all those early-adopters mess around with it and let the participating companies refine it some. But I gotta tell ya, this sounds like a big step in the right direction.

The Orthodontic Factor

For you orthodontists out there, imagine a prospective patient (or a patient’s mom and dad) sitting at home on the couch in front of the TV. And they type the name of your practice into Google TV. Or they simply say your name in their phone and it transmits to the TV. Right away, the TV brings up anything and everything they want to find about you – your website, your Facebook page, your Youtube account, you name it.

Hope you have some awesome videos to show. Hint, hint. Because the tried-and-true rules of television viewing dictate they’d much rather sit back on that comfy couch and watch a cool series of videos about your practice, than try to navigate through lots of links and text.

Seriously, all this finally lends genuine credence to the long-held belief that the TV and the computer are headed for a collision of epic proportions. And that, friends, makes your web presence infinitely more valuable, and more importantly - your website content infinitely more valuable.

It’s something to start thinking about now. Because if you’re not, somebody else is… simple as that.

Call OrthoMedia today and let’s talk about turning your website into a video-rich viewer experience!

Until next time…

~ Dusty