Eight Reasons To Get Google TV And Four Reasons Not Too

Wednesday, 03 November 2010 18:35

Eight Reasons To Get Google TV And Four Reasons Not Too

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By John Biggs and Matt Burns

Depending on who you ask, Google TV is either a boon to the television industry or a curse. It is, in short, the first major innovation in television since video-on-demand and no matter whose side you’re on Google TV is important? Why? First, it offers more. TV has always been a one-to-many transaction. Now it’s a many-to-many transaction. As we’ll

note below, Search is the thing Google does best and Google TV is all about search. If you’re looking for a show you not only get schedule information on that show but you get a wealth of clips, images, and web pages on that show. If you’re like me and like to read the Wikipedia page on a movie as you watch it (I’m the kind of guy who reads the last page of a mystery, so sue me), you can do that seamlessly without leaving the movie experience. That’s only one of the ways this technology is useful.

But Google TV isn’t ready for the masses. Like Android’s 1.0 iterations, Google TV is about as family-friendly as a cracking plant. The whole system is a skein of overlapping windows, unintuitive menus, and problematic playback features. Here are eight reasons you should buy – or at least try – Google TV and four reasons to avoid it right now.