google tv

As both a longtime Conan fan and cable-cutter, 2010's late night debacle was a double-whammy for me. Not only did Conan lose his 11:30 p.m. "Tonight Show" slot after just eight months, but he moved to basic cable, which meant I couldn't watch his new show with my over-the-air TV antenna.

Luckily, Conan's return to late night coincided with the rollout of Google TV, which is designed to do exactly what I need: let me watch the free full-episode streams of "Conan" from TeamCoco.com on my home theater HDTV. Yes, … Read more

NBC, CBS, and ABC had already said no to Google TV, and today Fox Broadcasting made it unanimous.

News Corp.-owned Fox became the last of the broadcast networks to block full episodes of its shows from appearing on the software platform that enables users to view Web content and video on their home TVs, according to multiple sources with knowledge of Fox's move.

A Fox spokeswoman declined to comment.

Fox executives didn't reject the offering as soon as the other networks because it was evaluating the platform, the sources said. Now that the evaluation is over, the … Read more

Starting today, Dish Network customers can buy the Logitech Revue set-top box for $179.

The discounted price is available to Dish customers who subscribe to the DVR integration service, which costs $4 per month. The Logitech Revue, which features the Google TV platform, otherwise costs $299.

Dish Network announced the reduced price for Logitech Revue last month.

With the help of a Dish DVR, Revue owners can do a bit more than those who connect the Revue to a cable provider's DVR. Like their cable counterparts, Dish subscribers can surf the Web from the Revue and view programming from … Read more

SAN BRUNO, Calif.--YouTube thinks it has found a better way to help its users find exactly which videos they're looking for on its site: smart tags.

At some point tomorrow evening, YouTube will turn on an experiment in TestTube, its lab, in which users will be able to see what the company is calling "topics" above videos they find through search results or that are shared among friends. These topics are sort of like tags, but are the product of sophisticated analysis of comments, viewing patterns, and other signals that will automatically appear above videos, said … Read more

Aside from actually hooking a PC to your TV, Sony's Internet TV with Google TV, aka the NSX-GT1 series, is the closest you'll likely come today to converging the two devices. That's both an advantage and a disadvantage compared to more conventional Internet-connected TVs, which typically rely on a "walled garden" of apps and streaming services to channel that fire hose of Internet content into discrete, useable streams. On the upside, the Sony's built-in Chrome browser--which behaves basically like the one on your computer, aside from an inability to get video from Hulu and … Read more

Facebook just launched a new suite of features for Facebook Places that might be the beginning of the end for Web privacy as we know it. Luckily Natali Del Conte is around to calm us down and explain what's really going on with the new location-based deals.

Facebook Places is a service that lets users share their location directly on their mobile phones, but the latest product is called Deals, and it allows businesses to advertise to target customers by offering a special discount for those who "check in" at a location.

Once users activate it, Facebook will share the deal on their walls so others can cash in as well, and business can even offer "loyalty" discounts for members that return to a venue. The FourSquare and Loopt offices must be getting pretty hot right now.

If mobile tracking weren't enough, soon you won't even be able to watch a movie without being watched yourself! In an effort to combat Web piracy, some movie theaters are installing video cameras in front of the movie screens, designed to also monitor crowd reactions to trailers for market research on what audiences prefer to watch.

Even worse, the same company, Aralia Systems, is also planning to roll out infrared scanning systems at the ticket-purchasing stations that scan for recording devices and will sound an alarm to alert management if an illegal instrument is detected. It sounds similar to the TSA's "enhanced" security screenings we've been hearing about recently!

Internet "Captchas" have been around for a while--they're tests placed on some Web sites to determine whether the user is human, and they usually come in the form of a randomly generated word or phrase that you have to copy into a field to gain access.

They're only slightly irritating and require little participation to enter, but a software firm called NuCaptcha is hoping that video advertisement captchas will be the online ads of the future.

Instead of traditional squiggly words, the new system forces users to watch a video advertisement with a short message scrolling across it. After it's done, it'll ask you to identify and retype a part of the message to continue toward your destination, and although it sounds like an annoying process, companies like EA, Wrigley, and Disney have already signed up with hopes that people will actually pay attention to the ads instead of just clicking through. Soon we'll be reminiscing about a time when all you needed was a pop-up blocker to surf under the radar!

Thanks to Natali Del Conte for joining us on this rainy Thursday, and be sure to check us out tomorrow morning with Steve Guttenberg, aka The Audiophiliac!

When we first saw the Logitech Revue demos, we were sold on the idea of a single set-top box that could search all our content sources--online or offline--and control our home theater components. Now that we've had our hands on a unit for nearly a week, we still love the concept, and the Revue has an undeniable amount of potential, but it's hard to give it an unqualified recommendation with all of its current issues and caveats.

As of press time, major content providers such as Hulu, CBS, and ABC are all blocking Google TV devices from streaming-video … Read more

For now, anyway, Google TV won't tell anybody about your tendency to flip back and forth between infomercials unless you agree to share.

In most cases Google TV will not collect data regarding the television shows users watch through the broadcast half of Google TV, according to the privacy policy for the new service. At least, it won't right away: Google said the current version wasn't designed to track that kind of data but a future version might be able to do so.

There is a catch for Google TV customers of companies like Dish Network, which has a special partnership with Google that unlocks additional features. Users will have to agree to share data about their viewing habits collected by Dish Network with Google to take advantage of those enhancements, such as the ability to search your Dish Network DVR from inside Google TV. Google also said that other television providers "typically do collect user data relating to channels tuned and content viewed through their services," but that's done separately from Google TV.

Google also said it has disabled the part of Google Chrome on the Google TV software that allows users to share their location. It also reserved the right to allow users to share their location in the future but promised to provide options to disable that feature should Google decide to push it live.… Read more

Watching Web videos on your couch is nothing new, but with Google TV's rollout now in full swing, having a big-screen-friendly version of your video site is very much in vogue.

The latest site on that growing list is Vimeo, which has just released something it's calling "couch mode." Users who point their browser toward Vimeo.com/couchmode get a full-screen video player, with big buttons and straightforward navigation to various video playlists. The idea is that you can hit the site from your Google TV, home theater PC, or even laptop and veg out to … Read more