Google TV vs Apple TV: The Showdown and the Lowdown

By snarkydeals

From: http://www.savings.com/

These days in technology it often comes down to a simple question: Apple or Android? Sure, there are other brands, but these are two brands and operating systems that we're all super familiar with in our daily lives. I have an iPod, MacBook, and Android phone (as well as two PCs, but that's another story!).

The Apple vs. Android battle has gone beyond laptop and cellphone to the arena of television--specifically Internet TV.

In a cage match to the death, which is the better product in the long run and also best for your budget: Google TV or Apple TV? It's time for the showdown and lowdown on these cool new Internet TVs: what do you need, how much do they cost, are they worth the price, and which is better? Google TV

The Google TV motto is "your TV just got smarter." I hope that doesn't mean it plans to revolt against its creators, Terminator style. But, being the new kid on the block, it looks like Google may have bitten off more than it can currently chew, so you're probably safe from Terminator-esque Internet TVs plotting against you. Probably.

Google TV boasts a lot of incredible features, but a pretty hefty price tag. To get Google TV, you need one of three things: a Sony Internet TV (enabled with Google TV automatically), a Logitech Revue box, or a Sony Internet TV Blu-Ray Combo Box. Sony Internet TVs start at $599 for a 24" model and go up to $1,399 for a 46" model. The TVs are sleek and cool, and because it's Sony, they are good buys in the long run.

Compared to the $299 price tag for the Revue and the $399 one for the Combo Box, it's hard to say which is the best option. If you've already got a killer big screen, I'd say stick with it and go for the Revue. Otherwise, get the Sony Internet TV. The Combo Box isn't all that great, and for what it does, the Revue does better.

So, what does it do??

With Google TV, you have very few restrictions on what you can do with your TV. Want to watch a movie? Browse Netflix, your DVR, live TV, YouTube and more straight from one source called "the Homepage." Just like in a browser or smartphone, your homepage sets the tone for what you want to do with your TV: you can set-up favorite channels, see what you've recently watched, add movies to a queue, and even record from your DVR straight from the search box. It's super-intuitive, just like you'd expect from Google.

Google TV also comes with applications, automatically installed with Pandora, Netflix, CNBC, and more. Also coming in 2011, the Android Marketplace for Google TV will be opened to developers wishing to create their own apps, so just like on any smartphone, you'll be able to download games, social, and other apps for your TV. (With this, you do run the risk of downloading apps that are not necessarily good for the OS, but I really think if you're dumb enough to download something that looks fishy, maybe you shouldn't have an Internet TV. Just sayin'.)

Other cool features for Google TV include the ability to "fling" content from any smartphone or iPod to your TV with one simple click. Plus, you can use your smartphone, iPod, or your own voice to surf channels or browse the web. It's all inclusive. Or, if you want to use a 'normal' remote, try the one it includes, which boasts a full QWERTY keyboard! All this awesome technology would make Marty McFly say, "This is heavy, Doc."

As for content, Google TV works with Netflix and Amazon (not iTunes, obviously) as well as YouTube, NBA Game Time, Blip.tv, and VEVO. It doesn't unfortunately work with Hulu, CBS, ABC, and some other popular sites due to legality issues (they basically don't want you getting their free content on your TV, even though you can get it on your iPod).

Overall, I love the idea of the Google TV, but at the moment it is extremely pricey and is not without bugs and limitations. That said, it does the most of any Internet TV solution on the market and offers free updates through its interface, so when the technology does catch up to the ideas, you'll get it all free. A great option if you have a little extra cash and want an all-inclusive solution.

Apple TV

Compared to Google TV, Apple TV doesn't appear to offer very much. There's no built-in web browser, so you can't get all the content you can from Google TV, the remote is small and weird, and there's no app store. But what Apple TV does offer, it does well: it is seamless to set-up (literally, just plug and play), offers a familiar interface for those of us who've used an iPod, MacBook, or iPad, and is extremely affordable. At just $99, it's a real bargain for becoming a media solution, but it has a ways to go to be comparable with other devices on the market.

The big content from Apple TV includes the ability to rent from Netflix or iTunes (no Amazon) as well as YouTube. You also can stream Internet radio, access Flickr photos and use MobileMe galleries, but it's missing the big thing that makes Internet TV unique: The Internet! I think in a year or so, Apple will jump on the bandwagon with a built-in web browser, as they can't really compete if Google TV lowers its prices. But for $99, you really may feel more comfortable getting your movies and some Internet abilities through Apple.

Also in the 'coming soon' stages, Apple TV will soon offer AirPlay, which will allow you to stream content from your iPod, iPad, or smartphone straight to the TV. This will really up the value of Apple TV, as will an extensive app store, if they decide to offer that.

The biggest downside I found for Apple TV was really the lack of content. You do have access to YouTube for a lot of great shows, but otherwise you're stuck with NetFlix's unfortunately limited selection of streamable TV shows (assuming you're paying the $9/month fee for Netflix) or the $1 per episode charge through iTunes. I mean, I'll pay $1 per episode if I have to, but only if every single show I want to watch is there. iTunes and Netflix have limitations, which YouTube can help fill in, but not entirely. Without a web browser, you're stuck with just these three options as a hopeful catch all.

But for the budget, there's really no getting around how affordable Apple TV is. For $99 (plus the cost of an HDMI cable if you don't already have one), you can see some TV shows, movies, YouTube videos, and your own iTunes content to your heart's desire.

Overall, if you're working on a budget or require the familiar, go with Apple. If you're willing to spend a little extra for a lot more content, try Google. Both will be updating more and more as the months and years go by, and they can really only get better with time.

Comcast's Latest iPhone App Manages Your DVR From Anywhere

From: http://gizmodo.com/

Comcast is fairly evil, to be sure. But if they're doing one thing right, it's the latest version of their free iPhone app, Comcast Mobile App 2.0.

In this walkthrough, you'll see that not only can you set recordings from your iPhone, but you can do so over the multiple DVRs that you may have in your house. (Note: so far, this function is only available in select areas.) Meanwhile, everyone receives new push notifications reminding you to watch or record your favorite shows...which admittedly sounds a bit useless in the DVR era.

If you're watching the clip, skip about 20 seconds in to get to the meat of it. (Not that Scott the Comcast guy doesn't seem very nice.) [iTunes via Comcast Blog Thanks Simon!]

Send an email to Mark Wilson, the author of this post, at mark@gizmodo.com.

TiVo Premiere: One set-top box to rule them all

With its new TiVo Premiere DVR, TiVo asks the rhetorical question: Would you like to replace your HD cable box/DVR, broadband Web box (a la Roku) and stereo-connected music player with a single box that lists content search results regardless of their location — broadcast, broadband, video-on-demand — all at one time?

Obviously the answer is yes, but there's a catch.

First, the TiVo Premiere, unveiled last night, is the Handy Housewife Helper of set-top boxes. There are two versions, the Premiere with a 320GB hard drive (45 hours of HD recording, $300) and the Premiere XL with 1TB (150 hours of HD recording, $500), each running TiVo's new widescreen interface and each offering an Ethernet internet connection to bring in Web content including Netflix and Amazon Video On Demand. When you search for shows, the results include content aggregated from all sources. In other words, if you search for, say Up!, it'll find and list where it is on broadcast channels, video-on-demand, Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, etc.

Premiere has a CableCard slot so you can replace your cable box (assuming you don't have to debase yourself too much to get your cable company to give you one), and TiVo will be offering a wireless 802.11N Wi-Fi adapter for $90 in June since you likely lack an Ethernet jack in your living room. Later this year, you'll be able to buy a remote with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard for faster typing.

TiVo improved on the company's legendary interface and artificial intelligence or whatever prestidigitation they use to help you find stuff you'd like even if you didn't know you liked it and didn't ask TiVo to find it for you. Premiere's interface is now completely widescreen, which means more info on a single screen and less drilling down for more detail. And having a terabyte of DVR space alleviates a lot of DVR guilt (having to decide what old unwatched shows to erase to make room for new shows you won't watch).

The caveat is cost. TiVo's monthly service fee (at least $13, depending on the plan you pick) is probably around the same as a cable company's box lease and DVR service fees. But you have to buy TiVo's box, and TiVo is unlikely to come to your house and swap it out on a whim.

One other minor caveat: Premiere uses HDMI 1.3, which means it likely won't play back upcoming 3D broadcasts in full HD. And too bad they didn't build in a Blu-ray player so I can get rid of another box.
If you decide TiVo's telepathic software, enhanced interface and Mr. Creosote recording capacity is well worth the price, you can order Premiere from TiVo's Web site as of this morning for delivery sometime in April.

Via TiVo

By Stewart Wolpin

Boxee Set-Top Box Is On The Way: Watch Out, Cable Companies

by Shawn Oliver

Boxee has been on a wild, wild ride since debuting to the world last year, and for those looking for new ways to catch more content online, it has become the go-too application. And while it has certainly taken off, there's still lots of room to grow. One of the main reasons that it has yet to become a household name outside of the tech community is the need to have a full fledged PC to run it. And unless you're looking to hook up a media PC/HTPC in your den, you're probably not going to see Boxee in your living room.

At least, that was the case up until this week. Out of nowhere, Boxee announced that it has located its first-ever hardware partner, which basically means that some sort of Boxee set-top box is on the way. Boxee has informed us that more details will be provided on December 7th when it reveals its first Beta software. Unfortunately, that means that little is known about the box right now. We're guessing that it'll be something like the Roku box or the Apple TV, but only time will tell what the actual design is like. However, obviously there are any number of small form-factor platforms available on the market today to get this done for the folks at Boxee - perhaps an NVIDIA Ion-based system might do the trick? In fact, the mock below looks a lot like an Acer Aspire Revo or maybe it's based on something a bit more powerful?

What could be possibly more important for Boxee is another small (but big) announcement. We're told that the Boxee software could eventually be embedded onto other devices. That means that your DVD player, DVR or even Blu-ray player could one day have access to Boxee, similar to how some devices already have access to Vudu and Netflix right now. Cable companies best watch out--things are about to get really, really interesting.

Rumor: Apple planning TV with iTunes integration and DVR capability?

iOnApple

by Yoni Heisler

In a recent note issued to clients, Apple analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray predicts that Apple will eventually come out with an Apple-branded television set with DVR functionality, and the ability to stream content directly from iTunes.

We expect Apple to design a connected television over the next two years (launching in 2011) with DVR functionality built in. These recorded shows could then sync with Macs, iPhones and iPods over a wireless network. The device would push Apple further into the digital living room with interactive TV, music, movie, and gaming features. With its iTunes ecosystem, Apple could develop a unique TV without any set-top-boxes or devices attached.

Could Munster be onto something?

One of the more overlooked items in Apple's earnings statement a few weeks ago was the phenomenal growth of the Apple TV, which saw its sales increase by 300%. Specifically, acting Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that the movie rental business on iTunes was particularly strong, and that Apple would therefore continue to invest in the Apple TV. Considering that an Apple TV allows users to stream content from their computer onto their big screen TV's, does it make sense for Apple to come out with their own TV altogether?

Rumors of an Apple branded HDTV have been around for quite some time now, but it never quite made sense for Apple to enter that market as the competition between HDTV manufacturers is fierce, and the margins extremely low by Apple standards. But like any market Apple chooses to enter, it would only come out with a product if it contained features that would immediately distinguish it from all other competing products. Purchasing an HDTV with built in iTunes integration and DVR capabilities seems attractive enough to meet that standard. Even more compelling is the idea that users could record programs via their TV, and then sync that content back to their iPods and iPhones for later viewing. Such a feature would allow Apple to command a premium on the price of an HDTV, and altogether avoid the price wars that the majority of other HDTV manufacturers typically and routinely engage in.

While Munster acknowledges that his predictions are somewhat rooted in speculation, he points to a number of factors that when taken together, indicate that Apple might have something big up its sleeve. Specifically, Munster points out that Apple is continuously trying to create an iTunes-centric ecosystem in the living room. He also points to a number of DVR and TV related patent filings submitted by Apple, as well as Apple's recent partnership with LG to provide Apple with a supply of LCD screens. If we've learned anything from Apple over the past few years, it's that it is never content to live off the success of its past products, and is always looks ahead towards the next big thing. It used to be portable MP3 players, and now the 'hot' market is smartphones. If Apple believes that TV's as a media hub is next, then an Apple branded TV might not be as far fetched as it initially seems.

At the same time, there are also a number of reasons why Apple releasing a TV doesn't seem plausible. For starters, adding DVR is more involved than simply furnishing the necessary software, and such a move would also put Apple in direct competition with almost every cable provider that furnishes their own dvr-enabled boxes. Second, one has to wonder if Apple really has anything substantial to gain monetarily by releasing their own TV's. Even assuming that Apple releases a fully featured HDTV in 2011, consumers don' t purchase television sets as frequently as they do MP3 players or phones. As cool as an Apple HDTV might be, it's hard to imagine anyone who's already happy with their current TV actually purchasing a new television from Apple solely for the DVR and iTunes integration.

The fight for digital dominance in the living room has been going on for quite some time, and almost every intiative to win that battle has resulted in failure. Apple, though, seems uniquely positioned to actually succeed where so many others have failed because it can leverage the popularity and simplicity of syncing iTunes content with other media devices. A networked Apple branded TV would undoubtedly help in that regard, but it would probably end up causing more problems than it would actually solve. Also, it's important to remember that no one knows what products Apple is going to release six months from now - let alone 2 years down the line. With all that in mind, the chances for an Apple branded TV seem quite slim.

A PC in your entertainment center

TiVo and its brethren get credit for introducing the average consumer to the concept of the digital video recorder (DVR) and opening the door to bigger and better things. The Home Theater PC (HTPC) is the computer enthusiast's answer to all the things that a DVR generally does, with the potential to do everything a full-fledged computer does. The concept had a bit of a slow start until Microsoft's release of Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) 2005, which gave the very familiar Windows a living room interface and the hardware support that HTPCs needed.

No matter what operating system you use for your HTPC, the same general concepts exist: recording and time-shifting TV are the device's most basic functions; playback and recording of DVD and Blu-ray are secondary but (perhaps) no less critical, followed by distribution of audio content and, in more ambitious setups, serving up digital media in its capacity as the whole home network's media storage center. And don't forget the ability to do mundane things like browsing the web from ten feet away on a shiny new 1080p HDTV.

The newest evolution in the HTPC is the continuing development of HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface). HDMI allows a protected connection that carries both audio and video over a single cable, and in the current version, 1.3a, HDMI is finally established enough that it now just works. . . most of the time. When the last update was published, HDMI for content-protected video was working fairly well in the HTPC arena, but HDMI for content-protected audio was not yet working very well. That has changed in the past few months, as AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel have all made substantial improvements in getting full-blown HDMI working. Things are now solid enough to make HDMI a vital part of the HD-capable HTPC.

It has been over three and a half years since the HTPC has gone mainstream. Today, the HTPC front-end is fairly well established, with a slick interface and a compact, living-room-friendly form factor, and it's reliable enough that you rarely notice it's there. Toss in working HDMI for both audio/video signals, and it's possible to fit an HTPC in your entertainment center with even fewer cables strewn about than ever before.

Going beyond the DVR

Though it has made great strides in the past few years, the HTPC is still fundamentally a geek endeavor. An off-the-shelf DVR is almost certainly going to be cheaper, use less power, and be easier to setup than an HTPC. Using an Xbox 360, PS3, AppleTV, or something else as a Media Center Extender to get content to your TV will also be cheaper (and probably easier). If you can skip recording and just playback recorded content, the Western Digital WD TV is cheap and effective. As Mythtv.org points out, lots of solutions exist, almost all of them cheaper than building your own HTPC.

You get lots of potential for additional capability with an HTPC, capabilities like massive amounts of storage space: There's nothing stopping you from building an HTPC with a few terabytes of hard disk space, assuming you're willing to deal with the cost and power consumption. You won't find that in an off-the-shelf DVR. (Of course, with an off-the-shelf DVR, you can call technical support when it breaks; or, more appropriately, when your family's DVR breaks and they live 300 miles away, they can call tech support so you can continue watching The Office, uninterrupted.)

Have a standard-definition DVR already and want to go high-definition (HD)? Sure, it would be cheaper to buy an HD-capable DVR, but what if you want Blu-ray, too? A Sony PlayStation 3 might be able to do the Blu-ray part, but with only 80GB max, it's severely lacking in space. Hence, for those with needs desires beyond the average DVR user, the HTPC starts to make sense.

The fact that you can do it all in one box with an HTPC is the real reason for building one. The HTPC can handle DVR duties, HD playback, and even gaming (now that finding fast yet quiet video cards for 1920x1080 gaming is no longer the chore it once was).

Evolution in the HTPC: proper HDMI support

The biggest change since the last update is the ability to implement the fully protected content path in an HTPC necessary to play HD content (both audio and video).

On the video hardware side, HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection), AACS (Advanced Access Content System), and the other mechanisms for the Protected Video Path have worked for the last generation or two of computer hardware. To get full-resolution protected content output on your monitor or TV, both the video source (the video card in your HTPC) and the display (monitor/TV) must support HDCP. Today, most do.

To play protected audio has been a bit more difficult until very recently, as no current video or sound card (no matter which hardware it has) supports the Protected Audio Path needed to get compressed multichannel audio (Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA) from your Blu-ray to your speakers via HDMI. The fix, as Anandtech and others discovered, is to let your HTPC decompress the multichannel audio, and send it over HDMI as uncompressed 8-channel LPCM. The hangup then became that hardware did not incorporate enough bandwidth to accommodate uncompressed 8-channel audio over HDMI, or if it did, the drivers or something else didn't work.

Redemption (or at least a workable fix) finally arrived in summer, 2008. AMD's Radeon HD 4000-series graphics cards, NVIDIA's GeForce 8200/8300 chipset, and Intel's G45 chipset all support 8-channel LPCM and actually work. Technically, Intel's G965 and G35 chipsets also support 8-channel LPCM, but the drivers never made it a pleasant experience.

ASUS's brand-new soundcard, the Xonar HDAV 1.3 would also work if you really needed to get an existing system with only video-over-HDMI to contain audio, but one look at the price of the Xonar HDAV 1.3 (almost $200), plus the thought of cramming another card into an already-crowded HTPC case, makes it a less than ideal solution for a new build.

Anandtech has considerable discussion on this in several recent articles, including one on 8-channel LPCM over HDMI and two more on chipsets with integrated video.