This is purely anecdotal, which means it is irrefutable truth:
The days of passively watching TV are over. We don’t watch it anymore; it gets used for the occasional movie or video game, but it spends far more time off and silent than it does on. Yet, we still see plenty of shows and keep abreast of news as well as anyone else.
Everyone in the house can watch whatever they want to, whenever they want to, and it doesn’t interrupt what anyone else is watching or doing. We use our tablets, our phones, and our computers with services like Hulu, Netflix, iTunes, ABC and YouTube.
In ten years, this will be the norm and the big monolithic black rectangle on your wall will quietly hang there as a monument of a bygone era.
The headstone above the TV’s grave is brought to you by Sony and Google, and it looks like this:
You've got to be kidding me.
A TV’s remote needs to be simple. Distance is already a massive abstraction, which gives a psychological perception of sluggishness, regardless of how responsive the UI is. Thus, information and menus on the TV need to be large enough to be seen from a distance (something video game UI developers seem incapable of understanding), and manipulating them needs to be quick and concise. This is anything but. With the GoogleTV, Google expects you to view webpages – designed to be seen on a screen about 3′ away from you – with it, and, using this “remote,” use it as a “computer” from 10′-12′ away. You’re either going to become frustrated at being unable to immediately see what’s on the screen, or you’re going to be standing up and in the way of anyone else in the room who might want to see what’s on the screen. Even Microsoft learned years ago what a bad idea this is. Engadget, who has a massive unwarranted collective boner for anything pumped out by Google, calls it unwieldy and confusing. They’re trying to turn the TV into a monitor, when the world around them is turning their monitors into TVs.
The Google Cult is extremely excited about it, and thinks it will “revolutionize TV.” However, the Google Cult – if the caliber of Android owners are any indicator – are a bunch of broke, basement-dwelling neckbeards who think everything is owed them and should be priced at an affordable Zero dollars, so until these things start getting handed out for free don’t expect them to sell.
