News & Analysis
New tube: Interview with GoogleTV's top engineer
Rick Merritt
5/21/2010 3:00 PM EDT
EE Times: What's your background?
Vincent Dureau: I started as a software engineer for Thompson CE and worked in early '90's on lots of the original MPEG video work. After that I helped launch the DirectTV network as part of the team building software for the first DTV set-top boxes.
After that I helped start a spin off called OpenTV, and in 2006 I decided to join Google. I worked first on Google TV ads as an extension of Google Ad Sense, a service to purchase broadcast TV ad inventory that has been running for about 18 months.
EET: How did GoogleTV get started?
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| Vincent Dureau Head of TV Technology, Google |
Dureau: In the back of my mind when I joined Google my primary motivation was to work on something like GoogleTV. So two and a half years ago I went through the regular Google process to start a new project and got ten minutes of fame with top management and they gave me the green light.
We needed to build a Version One of the product that set the bar for what I think is a new product category of smart TVs, just like there are smartphones. So we went to a small group of partners who shared our vision, and we ended up with best of breed of partners.
EET: How will this attempt to merge Web and TV do better than the many others that have largely failed?
Dureau: It’s a combination of timing and product definition.
In the US market, it's only now that the Web infrastructure is ready to stream high definition video over the open Internet. I would argue that was not the case even two years ago.
There is availability of [Web] content now. Programmers put premium shows on the Net at the same time as on the air. That was not the case even a year ago. And we have enough processing power in TVs and Blu-ray players to run a full browser.
EET: Initially GoogleTV only runs on Intel's CE4100 processor and Sony TVs. What's the outlook for getting this on other processors and TVs?
Dureau: It was important for us in version one to pick a partner that shares our vision, and Intel is a very good partner. But we've made sure there is nothing in the GoogleTV software stack that is CPU or hardware specific so we are very confident we can run on other CPUs.
MIPS and ARM come to mind. We will reach scale by open sourcing the stack. I am sure many chip set vendors are eager to get their hands on the stack and start the porting. It will be available as open source in 2011.
Our partners are early movers, and they get a strong advantage. [Sony chief executive] Howard Stringer put it well. "From now on anyone who wants to build GoogleTV will have to copy Sony," he said on stage yesterday.
But we are creating a platform that is completely open. It runs in a web browser so anyone can publish to it. Everything will be open source. That’s how you reach scale. Any vendor can take the source code and make products.
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rick.merritt
5/22/2010 1:23 PM EDT
Will GoogleTV go viral in 2011 when it is made open source? I suspect we will need to wait and see what the Sony and Logitech products are like in the fall. What do you think?
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CamilleK
5/22/2010 2:56 PM EDT
Depending on how soon Sony/Logitech roll out their box along with any cool wow experience, and the amount of net buzz, contagious behavior may quickly be provided by the early adopters before 2011. The blogosphere will already be set to give coverage and free promotion (net navel gazing and solidarity since after all net content has a new avenue). So, if the price is right, this could provide a good headstart. The challenge is to deliver a pleasant user experience, which means that rushing to market may not be in order if the features are cumbersome, squishy. Also promotional effort may be needed to counter nay-sayer campaigns. Perhaps experimenting with only 2 entrants is not a bad idea after all, to iron out any kinks. Sign me up to beta test....
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whizkidtn
5/24/2010 10:15 AM EDT
Here we go again with connecting the web and TV together in the living room. This has been tried various times since the mid-90's with limited success (Philips/Sony/Microsoft/Apple/etc). Only time will tell if we have a critical mass to be really successful. IMHO, It seems that you really have to have the bulk of the service providers (i.e., Comcast, etc.) engaged and able to really push this into the home if you really want to gain real penetration and traction into this space. Time will tell.
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SallyF
5/24/2010 11:08 AM EDT
Google rocks! Standardization and open systems will save all of us tons of money over the long run. Proprietary systems are okay if you can afford them, but an open system with multiple vendors products available will make a wide selection available to the consumer. Horray for Google!
One important point Mr. Dureau didn't make or wasn't printed is that a few years ago the resolution of TVs was too low to display text. HD has allowed the resolution of TVs to surpass many computer monitors. Low resolution TV is quickly disappearing and high definition is becoming commonplace. This is an important difference to market timing, and will be instrumental in making Google TV a success.
Regarding content, Google's aquisition of YouTube positions them well with a tremendous amount of original material to supplement the networks.
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mickrussom
5/24/2010 2:03 PM EDT
Google, the information oligarch that maintains so much private information on people, the KGB/GRU/FSB/SVR/CIA/NSA/FBI would literally die to have the information Google keeps when it spies on people. Yet, we all know that oligarchs collude with other oligarchs, and the oligarchical collectivist governments and their respective spy agencies will gain the information of Google to further suppress and subjugate freedom, liberty and dissolve our national sovereignty in an information war being waged against the last remaining free people of Earth.
Google, you are pure evil now, and should be regarded with a scornful mistrust.
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Jayakumar
5/27/2010 12:21 AM EDT
IP centric entertainment devices appear to be having issues in getting acceptance from consumer market. For example, we in Epigon Media Technologies ( http://www.epigon.in/) had created Internet Radio device during 2002 and thought that it will fly like portable audio players. But some reasons, even today Internet Radio is accepted by consumer market. May be Google can try their luck and spend time and effort in creating IP centric TV and try their best towards getting in to consumer market.
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Jayakumar
5/27/2010 12:27 AM EDT
Even Echostar's (satellite TV service) top boss had seen working version of Internet radio receiver in Mumbai and i had shown him clean demo. But in return, Echostar boss had abused me for getting media via IP network. Essentially, Echostar boss did not like Media via IP ( this was old news), but now google is going with Echostar ( strange for me!!!!!)
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