Despite my affection for iDevices (even ones that I can not afford), it looks like Google TV could seriously kill off my desire for Apple TV (despite my affection for the latter’s 99 cent rentals).
One of our goals with Google TV is to finally open up the living room and enable new innovation from content creators, programmers, developers and advertisers. By bringing Google Chrome and access to the entire Internet, you can easily navigate to thousands of websites to watch your favorite web videos, play Flash games, view photos, read movie reviews or chat with friends—all on the big screen. […]
In addition, we’ve partnered with some of the leading premium content providers to bring thousands of movie and TV titles, on-demand, directly to your television. Amazon Video on Demand offers access to over 75,000 titles for rental or purchase, and Netflix will offer the ability to instantly watch unlimited movies and TV shows, anytime, streaming directly to the TV.
Note: Emphasis mine.
While Apple TV does have some cool features, its lack of flash support could make the device look stale compared against Google TV (who will embrace flash as well as HTML5 websites).
Although flash truth be told performs poorly upon Android devices (at least the ones that I have seen), Google TV will probably be able to handle flash very well due to the fact it will have more memory than your average smartphone, plus the fact that it will be plugged in (so no worries about battery drain).
On a more omnious note, Google TV’s ability to play flash could encourage companies to ditch Apple TV in the future and simply charge users to access their sites instead (which would keep more money in their pocket).
While Apple TV will probably do find by itself, Steve Jobs may have to prepare himself for a future where Google “powers” everyone’s television sets, regulating Apple TV to an tiny minority.
Originally posted on October 4, 2010 @ 2:22 pm