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I'm Drew Breunig and I obsess about technology, media, language, and culture. I live in New York, studied anthropology, and work in advertising technology.

These are reactions to things I feel are important.

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Engadget Reviews, Caveats, Google TV 

Every paragraph discusses a feature then warns of its more awkward points, for example:

  1. There’s an app store! Or rather, there will be next year…
  2. Set-up is better than home theater PCs, but still requires 30 minutes, 5 cables, 12-15 menus, and four steps to adjust your overscan.
  3. On one hand Google TV works with what you already own. On the other, it’s an incomplete solution. Google has even gone as far as offering reviewers free Direct TV installation with review units. I love this quote: “Setup is relatively quick and easy, as long as you remember to activate your DVR for integration first via the phone or a visit to Dish’s site… There’s still very little interface integration — you still have to use the Dish box’s program guide, DVR interface and other controls, so you still have to deal with two UIs. Oh, and Dish charges a $4 monthly “integration fee” to make it all work.”
  4. And even after that comment, Engadget writes, “If you don’t have Dish Network, your experience will be far less integrated.”

What worries me most though is this comment buried in the lead:

Google tells us the Intel chip offers the best price / performance ratio right now, but that nothing’s written in stone for the future — just like modern smartphones kicked off furious innovation in the mobile chipset market, Google expects the media-chip market to rapidly become more competitive in the future in response to connected TV devices. But for right now it’s Atom, which is a big win for Intel in this space — and in fact, Intel claims to have written half of Google TV’s code.

Whoa. Suddenly, moving to better chips, updating the software to be more responsive, solving Flash stutter issues, and releasing the software as ‘open’ looks way more difficult. This isn’t simply a laundry list of tasks casually tossed out by Engadget as incidental fixes are not only for Google, but for Intel as well. Granted, there are ways to circumvent this reliance but it certainly affects the roadmap’s timeline. Mark your calendars in 2012 for a solid GTV 2.0.