Google TV?
Just about everyone here in the office is a gadget hound.
We love reading up on the latest time sucking gizmos that seem to pop up daily. So, when it was announced that Google TV would soon be available for purchase, our own Digital Media Director, Matt Zumstein, decided he would take the plunge and buy one.
Below is Matt’s experience with Google TV:
I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a new product coming out as I was with Google TV. A TV/box that could stream the Internet and allow consumers to interact and download any application in the Android store, what’s not to get excited about?
The first day it was available to the public I reached out to a buddy of mine at Google who granted me a 20% discount, even more reason to get excited. I ordered the Sony blue ray Google TV that night and counted the days until it arrived. My wife and I had already created plans to cut cable and stream directly from Hulu and CBS interactive.
The day it arrived, all I could think of was coming home and playing with my new toy. Setting it up was not difficult and took probably twenty minutes. I quickly jumped on Hulu only to get the dreaded error message:
“We see you are trying to access Hulu through Google TV. Hulu is not currently allowing streaming through Google TV but we are working hard to bring you Hulu Plus”.
As multiple obscenities left my mouth I realized the kids were in the other room and I needed to tone it down.
I quickly checked CBS.com, ABC.com & NBC.com only to receive the same error message. My wife and I looked at each other in disappointment but tried to stay optimistic. We went on TBS.com, TNT.com & HGTV.com and found videos we could stream; however the experience was not the same.
TNT videos minimize at every commercial break and you need to manually put back onto full screen.
We also checked out Youtube only to find the quality of the videos on an HDTV was poor at best. We even tried to stream from Fancast which a lot of bloggers were saying was the current work around.
Our first reaction was to return the product immediately since there was no value for us. But again we wanted to stay optimistic about a product I spent the last three weeks dreaming about. Realistically we knew that Google would not strike a deal with the major networks anytime in the near future. But we thought maybe we could justify our purchase with the app store.
Quickly we found out there was no app store, just 8-10 pre loaded applications (most of them paid apps).
While having Vevo as an app and being able to stream from Netflix was cool I couldn’t justify the $400 purchase to my wife or even to myself. It was time to return it.
I called Sony up and stated my case and let them know Google TV was blocked from all the major players. The first person I spoke with told me I could return it but I would have to eat the $10+ shipping cost. Maybe I was a little emotional from my recent disappointment but that was not the answer I was looking for.
Next I was told that I would need to speak with someone from Sony’s technical service department to confirm that the product was not as advertised. After being bounced around a couple departments I finally reached someone who could help me, but unfortunately my phone died and I had to start the process all over again. It was just one of those days.
Finally I spoke with someone at Sony but they swore they could stream Hulu, which I quickly correct by pointing them to several blog postings stating otherwise.
At last I convinced them it was false advertising when I asked them where I could stream the program “Community” which was advertised on all of the TV’s on their website.
Long story short, I spent about two and a half hours with at least five people in customer service and I think I am finally going to be able to save that $10 shipping cost I was so adamant on saving.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that the technology is present to stream anything on the web and even download apps specifically from the Android store (Google TV says coming in early 2011 now). The future versions of this product will definitely be something to get excited about, once all the major players are on board.
Personally I am going to wait till version 2.0 or 3.0 comes out before I take a risk on this again.
But until then I’m rating this product 2 out of 5 stars.
