Tech Giants Battle to Control Your Living Room Part one

The Battle between The Living-Room Devices

Apple and Google, the ultimate mobile-space rivals, are making slow but steady progress in their campaigns to penetrate consumers' living rooms, with set-top boxes to complement cable or satellite receivers. Google's initial effort, the Google TV-equipped Revue box, was a flop at $299--but this summer Logitech lowered the Revue's price to a more palatable $99.

And late last month, Google began pushing a free update to Google TV OS, which includes (at launch) some 30 new TV-optimized Android apps. The apps consist mainly of casual games and screensaver-like animations (a faux fireplace, for instance), but apps on your TV have the potential to become the channels of the future. For example, video content providers might launch a video app in the Android Market that offers you either free, advertising-supported content or subscription-based, advertising-free content. What the subscription price turns out to be is one of the biggest unknowns that may help determine whether this approach will stick.

So far, CNBC, CNN, Fox, and Wall Street Journal are on board with apps. Apps on your TV will help transform Google's set-top box OS into a casual gaming platform (eight simple games are currently available, including an Angry Birds clone).

Still, don't place your bets on Google TV until Apple has taken its shot. Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson reports that, at the end of his life, the Apple CEO was excited about a project to create an "integrated television set that is completely easy to use." The Apple set wouldn't need to include complex remotes or a bunch of set-top boxes, Jobs believed.

It's unclear whether Apple's approach will take the form of an integrated television or an inexpensive box--essentially an overhaul of the currently available Apple TV. The new Apple TV may ship as early as 2013, according to reports, and it could be based on Siri, the voice-enabled virtual assistant technology found on the iPhone 4S. A Siri-controlled TV would not be without difficulties, however, as my colleague Ian Paul notes. Siri needs a permanent Internet connection to work, so if your connection went down, you wouldn't be able to control the set, unless there's a backup pushbutton remote.

Who's going to prevail in the battle for your living room? It's too early to pick winners among the competing companies. But the winning approach will surely give you much more control over your entertainment options--allowing you to pay for only the content you're interested in and letting you watch that content when you want to.


Source is
http://www.pcworld.com/article/243360/tech_giants_battle_to_control_your_living_room.html