The Google TV universe is expanding.
The whole universe was in question just a few weeks ago, when Logitech rapped the Google TV mediaware as "beta" software and jettisoned its Revue set-top box unit as a "mistake" (although not enough of a mistake to cease sales throughout the US Christmas shopping season and in to 2012 as a highly sought after Amazon sale of refurbished unit at $79.99 with Prime shipping)
Now, out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas comes news of not just one, or even two, but three new partners that will be launching products. LG, rival Samsung and upstart Vizio all will be launching internet-connected TVs that will contain at least the Android 3.1 (Google TV 2.0) operating system.
In addition, Sony tried to set the record straight about its ongoing decision to continue forward with Google TV based units. Sony announced that the NSZ-GT1 (a Wi-Fi-enabled 1080p Blu-ray disc player featuring Google TV) at almost twice the price of the Logitech Revue, had sold better than expected, and that the Sony Google TV-powered smart TVs (the 40" NSX-40GT1 and 46" NSX-46GT1) are the best selling TVs in Sony's stable of products.
“They’re among the best-selling TVs we have," Brian Siegel, Sony TV vice president told USA Today in a late 2011 interview. "Media has done a real good job of beating [Google TV] up."
The one major change in all this, including Sony's newer devices (the Blu-Ray player equipped NSZ-GP9, and its Logitech Revue mimicking NSZ-GS7 set-top box may both use an ARM chip from Marvell rather than the Intel Atom chip that Intel offers for the set-top box market but discontinued support for in the internet-connected or Smart TV market.
As reported in a recent StreamingMedia.com article on the Logitech Revue, the Intel Atom CE4100 chipset powers both the Sony NSZ-GT1 Google TV box and the Logitech Revue. Google's reference platform for all Google TV-powered set-top boxes was based on the Atom chipset, so that the original Google TV firmware—and subsequent updates—would run consistently across all consumer devices.
Sony used the CE4100 chipset to its maximum advantage—selling a significant number of NSZ-GT1 set-top boxes and smart TVs in the process—while Logitech opted to hold back on the CE4100's capabilities, as we reported in the Workflowed blog on Logitech's refusal to support the MPEG-2 codec and MPEG-2 transport streams.
The new chipsets provide some interesting opportunities, and we think Google TV-powered products, especially Smart TV products, will gain an advantage using these new ARM processors.
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