Google has officially unveiled Google TV at its annual I/O developers conference, a product that it is hoping will change the face of broadcasting and is due to launch sometime in 'Fall 2010'.
Google is billing its efforts as 'when the web meets TV and TV meets the web' and is aiming to bring internet functionality to the traditional TV watching experience, as well as web apps and a specially adapted YouTube user interface called YouTube Leanback.
Google is currently working with partners to produce a specialised input device, and a big part of its plan is 'rethinking the way we access television' - which as you may guess is the integration of search.
Curation of mass information
The demonstration was hampered by problems, but when it worked, Google TV was shown using search to bring back multiple results from web and TV - offering curation of the huge amount of information.
In truth, even without the problems, the user interface looked to be a long way from ideal as yet, with the web TV content playing as you would see it in a browser window, although this will, of course, evolve with the internet.
Google's TV attempts does, of course, tap into some of the better content from the internet - particularly from YouTube, the video giant that it owns.
Hardware
There are key components for anyone wanting to put Google TV in their hardware - which will include Blu-ray players, televisions, consoles and set top boxes - broadband connectivity and ethernet connection, an HDMI out, a strong processor and all input devices must have keyboard and a pointing device.
The vocal search - demoed earlier for Android 2.2 - was also shown, with the phone acting as the input device for the Google TV platform.
That device also allowed people to send videos that they were watching on their handset to their television .
Google TV is built on Android 2.2, with the Chrome browser and with a full Flash 10.1 plugin, which, of course, means that applications will run on the platform - and therefore on your television.
As part of Google TV, Google also showed off YouTube Leanback - which uses the traditional YouTube content, but makes it work in a much more traditional TV-like channel.
