Feature

Google’s ‘big’ Google TV announcement is a new YouTube app

Jake Smith

Google just announced on its Official Google TV Blog the “big announcement” for tomorrow. The Google TV crew announced an all-new YouTube app for the Google TV platform. The app features a smoother experience and bug fixes. The big feature here, however, seems to be a new feature called “Discover” that lets users view YouTube channels by different categories (as seen above).

The YouTube app will also gain the new channels that the desktop version of YouTube has seen. From there, you can navigate through users’ videos, favorites, and subscriptions.

When viewing a video, you can use the up and down arrows on your Google TV’s remote to navigate to the information screen. On the information screen, you can interact with a video by giving it a thumb’s up, adding it to your favorites or playlist, and leaving a comment.

The update should roll out to every Google TV user in the next few days from the Android Market. Oh, and I have to say that I am disappointed. Google overhyped this announcement.

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Google teases big announcement for Google TV tomorrow

Jake Smith

Get excited! Google teased a “big announcement” for the Google TV on its Facebook page last night. What in the world could this be? There is a chance tomorrow’s announcement by Google could surround the streaming home-entertainment device that was leaked last week, or it could be something entirely different. Perhaps it is new hardware out of an OEM, but we are not so sure that is Facebook-post worthy. We will know for sure tomorrow.

Get ready for Monday, we have some big announcements!

Update: It’s nothing special.

(via The Verge)

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Google rolling out Android 3.2 to Google TVs, making way for Ice Cream Sandwich soon

Jake Smith

Google is continuing its push on Google TV by rolling out Android 3.2 to Sony’s Google TV while the update to the Logitech Revue is on its way, GigaOm pointed out. The 3.2 update is not too major, but it does bring some nice updates, such as: Google TVs now boast hardware acceleration, HTTP live streaming that helps with HTML 5 live video, changes to the way Google TV identifies channels to make it easier for developers, and lastly a few user interface changes to Google Chrome.

That is all fine and dandy, of course, but what we really want is Ice Cream Sandwich to roll out to Google TVs soon. Android 3.2 will be the last major update before Ice Cream Sandwich operating system lands, but smaller updates will obviously ensue. We should be seeing ICS land by the end of the year, hopefully. Perhaps Google will give us a little more info at their Google I/O conference, so stay tuned!

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Google TV adds ‘Funny Or Die’ content with new app

Jordan Kahn

Google announced on the Google TV blog today that Google TV users would now be able to access original content from online comedy portal “Funny Or Die” through a new app. The announcement noted “Funny Or Die” currently has more than 12 million viewers a month and was founded by Gary Sanchez Productions consisting of Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and Chris Henchy, with Hollywood comedy producer Judd Apatow as partner. You can access the new app through the Google TV Spotlight folder under “All Apps.”

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Google rolls out ‘Search plus Your World’ update with personalized search results

Jordan Kahn

Google began rolling out a new update to search results known as the “Search plus Your World” that includes both public results with privately shared posts and profiles from your Google+ account.

You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step in this direction by introducing three new features.

There are a few scenarios where the Search plus Your World results will prove beneficial. Included in the results are three new features: Personal Results provide photos and posts privately shared from your Google+ account, Profiles in Search, which includes Google+ profiles in results and auto complete, and People and Pages that provides quick links to celebrities and brand pages related to your query.

Of course, there are concerns being raised that Google is favoring its own service’s results over content from other similar social networks. As TechCrunch noted, this is only the beginning of personal search results starting with Google+ and Picasa, but it will eventually likely include results from Gmail, Google Docs, and other Google services. Google is providing a toggle to turn off the new personal results for those who do not want to participate. The company also clarified its stance on potential security concerns for the update:

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Sony announces two new Google TV set-top boxes at CES 2012

Jake Smith

Sony just announced two new Google TV set-top boxes at CES 2012 (via TechCrunch). The first set-top box, dubbed the NSZ-GS7 Network Media Player, is without Blu-Ray onboard and is simply just for streaming media from Sony’s pre-loaded apps Media RemoteTM, TrackID and apps from the Google TV marketplace. The second set-top box, dubbed the NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray Disc Player, is the same as the first but features Blu-Ray onboard. A backlit QWERTY keyboard will control both. Sony said both boxes will land this summer, but no pricing information has been given.

The full press release is available after the break:

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