Google Knocks on Living Room Door, Quietly, for Android TV - Digits - WSJ

"Google has tried to penetrate the living room for several years, with limited results. Its latest approach suggests a desire to learn from past mistakes. The company, with little fanfare, has been courting TV makers with software dubbed Android TV, a TV-oriented version of Google’s popular mobile operating system. Some details about the company’s plans were reported over the weekend by The Verge, including screen shots showing apps for delivering content to TVs over the Internet. But key elements of Google’s strategy were also discussed by partners at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, though they attracted little attention. The Chinese appliance maker Hisense Co., for example, used the event to show off TVs that run on Android TV, one of which, the H6, went on sale in December. Other details are described in a video presentation at CES by an executive from Marvell Technology Group, a Silicon Valley company that makes chips for TVs and other devices. Android TV is 'the same operating system that runs on phones and tablets, it’s just a different app package that goes along with it,' said Gaurav Arora, Marvell’s director of digital entertainment systems and software, in the video. Arora said Google has offered incentives to companies to make versions of apps with a 10-foot, or 'lean-back' experience that 'mostly focus on media consumption and all the kinds of things you want to do with media in the living room,' he added. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on Android TV ... Android TV also supports voice recognition, like some other living-room devices such as Amazon.com’s new Fire TV, Frank said. Users can push a button on the Merlin remote and say the name of a TV show and Google will retrieve it, he said. The system will also search inside apps and list relevant content offered by each of them, Frank explained ... Users of the new Hisense TVs log in with their existing Google account credentials, from existing services like Gmail or an Android phone. Video, music, apps and games can be downloaded onto these TVs from Google’s Play store and popular services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, Crackle, Pandora and Spotify all work on the larger screens, Frank said ..."