It’s no secret that Google’s Android is a hot potato in the mobile market, even against the consumers darling the iPhone, one area that Google however, hasn’t been so lucky with is Google TV – but that hasn’t stopped Google persevering.
Since it launched, it’s been panned virtually across the board as a mediocre product, nearly all the “major” TV networks in the United States have blocked it from accessing content (why they’ve done this is beyond myself or even Google) the other being well…the price, especially when it launched on the heels of the economic downturn
Google TV on its “traditional” x86 legs was well…expensive, Intel’s Atom is (personally speaking here) a rather…lackluster attempt to make a less power chugging CPU, utterly trounced by AMD’s (cheaper) “Fusion” CPU/GPU offerings, but irregardless, neither platform is “cheap” enough for what Google TV should be.
A USD$99 TiVo-like device marketed as Android for the TV, it should work with any old Bluetooth (or USB!) keyboard (and mouse, if applicable) that you can either run wirelessly (preferably with 802.11N, so HD and all that works) or via Gigabit LAN, if Google wants to go after iOS with it, then make it work with Android 4.1 (or 5.x) so I can control it via my tablet, or my phone, like that other device coming out in 2012 and it can link up with all my other devices (be they Windows, Mac or Linux)
A lot of that is extremely easy (and even done for them!) due to Android being a Linux base, making it possible to make an ARM Google TV out of “off the shelf” parts almost, helping move the platform along as Android’s open nature did and driving down prices
Oh, and Google, please actually market the thing outside the United States, don’t let it falter like that one other decent product nobody bought