Years ago Steve Jobs called the Apple TV a “hobby.” As hobbies go, though, this one has turned out to be pretty popular. Though not one of Apple’s best-selling products, the Apple TV has made quite a respectable showing, especially since the launch of the second generation version in 2010 (the third gen, of course, came out in March alongside the new iPad). The same can’t be said, though, for Google’s own foray into television. The Google TV has been pretty underwhelming, on the whole. Plagued by high prices at launch and somewhat limited content offerings, Google has struggled to get Google TV off the ground.
That may be about to change, though. Citing “sources involved in the keynote address,” Fox News’s Clayton Morris claims that Google’s got big news coming for Google TV during the keynote for this year’s Google I/O conference. According to these sources, Google will shift the TV interface’s focus away from content sources and onto the content itself. That is, instead of having to worry about whether the show you want to watch is on Netflix or being broadcast live or is stored on your DVR, you just pick what you want to watch and watch it.
Other updates and new features will reportedly be coming from third party developers. Most notably, Google TV might be getting its own version of Apple’s AirPlay, allowing people to stream content from their phones onto their TV through their Google TV box.
While Google TV showed a lot of promise initially, it simply hasn’t managed to live up to Google’s hopes for it. Though these rumored new features are bound to improve the experience, it still remains to be seen whether Google can offer a serious challenge to the other major players in the streaming TV market.