The Nexus Q will bomb. $299 for a very confused offering. From the Guardian:
> So yes, Nexus Q is a "small Android-powered computer that's designed to live in your home", connecting to speakers and the cloud, as well as the Google Play store. It's controlled from a smartphone or tablet, but not to stream content from the device to the Nexus Q.
Nobody cares about how the streaming is achieved technically, and I think the "social" aspect is massively over-sold. If I want to show someone content on my tablet wouldn't we just sit next to each other and look at the tablet?
The Nexus 7 apparently already has HDMI out (I think) so I just can't see anyone forking out $299 for some bizarre social content streaming concept party.
To be fair: the "TV thing" market is a huge mess, and none of those devices are making much real progress replacing the cable and satellite boxes users already have. We're still waiting on the proper innovation here.
It seems like the Q (despite the pretty blatant mispricing -- I agree that they'll move essentially zero of these at $300) has at least a new mix of features to try. The built-in amp makes it an attractive audio box at least. The idea of driving content from the handsets in the room seems better to me than the (IMHO ridiculous) idea the TV vendors have of making handsets into "remote".
The lack of storage isn't really a problem if everything is sourced from the cloud (which it is already for most of those gadgets anyway). And the "no apps" is silly -- it's an android box. Though I didn't see much about a UI metaphor. Obviously the HDMI display isn't going to be a touchscreen, but you can always plug in a keyboard and mouse (this works today on your GNex if you have the right cable).
>We're still waiting on the proper innovation here.
I disagree. I think there's lots of interesting and cool tech in HTPCs and HTPCs in tiny TV boxes. I just think it's hard to supplant the cable company's box that contains crappy DVR when it is required to watch television anyway. Most people don't want to go through any more layers than they have to.
As far as I know, "innovation" to break that chokehold would result in massive legal battles with uncertain outcomes. One way around it would be to put a Blu-ray drive in Boxee et al and slip the boxes in as Blu-ray players, but then you still can't decode cable signals and use DVR features for TV. Even if the set-top boxes can somehow get approval to decode Blu-ray media, there is no way the media companies would let you e.g. rip your movies onto the box, making them effectively expensive Blu-ray players with worthless, empty hard drives.
We've switched to AppleTV. We don't watch TV at all. In practice this means we miss seeing most CBS shows, see HBO shows about six months late, never see a single ad, and save a buttload of money (even after paying for a lot of content). Oh, and we can use any iOS device and any remote as a remote.
All of our content is on demand.
The only reason we can't see CBS shows is that CBS chooses to spurn AppleTV for strategic reasons that will probably prove wrongheaded. Similarly HBO is probably bound by contracts.
Comcast minimal cable TV (we don't use the TV except for the bundle cost) bundled with cable is $60/month. Verizon FiOS (which we'll be getting at our next place) offers phone with Internet for $50/month.
Either with a basic digital cable supporting two TVs would be north of $110 even with special offers.
Sure, I'm not saying there's no value here. But the glitches you posit (spotty coverage of some content, delayed access), combined with the general hassle of getting your internet working before your TV works, are simply keeping these devices out of homes right now.
What you have is "cheaper TV with a few holes", and that's great for you. But that's not what the market wants -- believe it or not they want to pay that $100/month, because that's what they're doing already, and it works for them. The winning product needs to take that $100 and do something better for the consumer (or conversely, produce a cheaper product with no visible disadvantages at all).
I disagree. Most of my peers own an Xbox360 or PS3, and those that don't have some kind of Roku / NAS / whatever setup. I think fewer and fewer young people have cable boxes, they are fine with just a solid internet connection. There is, of course, a huge existing install base that is not going anywhere soon.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your peers are early 20's tech people living in shared urban apartments. That's not representative. Outside the geeks in the cities, people have satellite dishes and cable boxes. Just check revenue numbers for Comcast or Dish.
Obviously these devices "could" replace the legacy content delivery systems. But they aren't yet, and frankly their grown numbers aren't going to get them there any time this decade. It needs something more.
Yes, it needs the legal privilege to decode the cable stream. This is likely not legal under the DMCA; I would guess it constitutes the distribution of a tool intended to circumvent "copy protection", and I would further guess users of such a device could also be held legally liable for actually using a tool to circumvent copy protection.
Besides that, I think that almost all of the set-top boxes blow away the boxes of the carriers on practically every front.
The difference between an Xbox say and a NAS is one of power. Low power set top boxes are a must. The amount of electronics piling up in people's houses is just ridiculous.
The consoles are guzzlers - with the exception perhaps of the Wii.
Work just bought me to experiment with one of those Android 4.0 Mini PC's with HDMI, USB, and MicroSD on them the size of a thumb drive. Just got it a few hours ago and was only around $75. I know it has Netflix, not sure what else at the moment since this is my first Android device of any sorts.
Don't forget you can also get a cheapo laptop/netbook for $299 that does all of the above as well, and is easy to find other software for (fun little emulation machines paired with a 360 controller), that you can easily toss in a bunch of usb external drives and get terrabytes of storage.
That's true. An old net book or second hand laptop could be re-purposed as a NAS. I've found though that getting smooth HD out of older hardware, isn't that good. And the desktop OSs are pretty crappy on a TV. There's certainly a gap in the market here. Currently this is a very confusing landscape. It's bad enough trying to find a machine that will handle multiple codecs.
I loved how he said something to the effect of, "Now, your friends can play music in your living room." Then, the dramatic pause as he waited for the audience reaction. Honestly, it seemed like the audience felt bad for him and bailed him out by clapping unenthusiastically.
The reason cloud streaming is so important is because wireless streaming from a device eats the battery alive. Amazon recently announced that battery and then price are the primary drivers for users buying tablets, and battery is amazingly import for phones as well.
Cables are a little iffy, a lot of non-techies simply aren't going to go plug their cable in to show off their pictures or music. A simple enough UI, though, can bring them in. Successful consumer mobile products generally prize being ridiculously simple because that's the only thing many people will use and media oriented, because that's the thing most people do with the smart part of their phones, nothing more.
Sergei Brin walks on, and they hold a LIVE Google Glass demo with skydivers in a hangout, and bikers, and you see them falling and cycling to the studio.
"The latest release of Android, with buttery graphics and silky transactions."
Can I nominate "buttery" (and related phrases) as the most annoying tech buzzword that's caught on recently? Particularly as it never really means perfectly smooth - even iOS on the latest hardware has the occasional stutter.
I'm pretty new here. Are the mods actually secret? I guess I'm used to the open atmosphere of Reddit administration (but couldn't stand the memes/image macros).
The style of presentation strikes me as awkward - why wouldn't they let the main presenter just use the phone and control the slides himself? It adds a lot of unnecessary "next slide please" interruptions.
Or, as the presentation is put together ahead of time, you train the people in control of the slides to know when the slides should be advanced.
(That said, there is a playful back/forth between the guy running the demos and the speaker that is, at least to me, something that makes it more fun.)
The "you need to leave at 10:14 minutes because it'll take 16 minutes to get to your 10:30 appointment" (because of local traffic/public transit) looks AWESOME.
Why? Google has a huge source of information for traffic analysis, time estimates via Google Maps. The "ETA" on Nav is precise no matter whether I'm in podunk Midwest city or Seattle and I get traffic overlays in both as well.
I have used my android phone for turn-by-turn navigation, finding transit, restaurants and other POI, translating foreign-language signs, etc. making me a pretty independent world traveler in Tokyo, Hamburg, London, Milan, and Paris. I have rarely had any problems with their location-based features.
I can't say that I have. Granted, there is a huge amount of territory in the United States that is neither San Francisco or New York. And as much as you or I may not like it, it seems pretty clear that Google primarily targets the United States for new features. (Given the crowd-sourced nature of their traffic data, I would venture to guess that it's partly because of legal issues).
There seemed to be a collective gasp in the room. I did too. It seems like there is a red line somewhere for digital integration, I'm not sure exactly where it is or if it is moving as people get more comfortable with technology.
I was disappointed that during the Google Glass free-fall, the Moscone Center didn't have one of those Google Maps pins on top of it to demonstrate the obvious augmented reality capabilities.
That is because you were just seeing the output of Google Glass's camera, not seeing what gets shown on the Glass's display. It may already be showing the Maps overlay for all you know.
Seems weird to promote a (ok, not great) tablet by promoting how it works with Google Play. I've heard of Google Play, but rarely used it (except to download android apps). I certainly wouldn't consider "access to the huge Google Play library" to be a compelling advantage for a new piece of hardware.
Sell one thing at a time, don't try to sell a new tablet AND an as-yet-unsuccessful content platform at the same time, I think.
Google Play is the rebranded Google Market app. This has been out for awhile now. This is not new to an Android user. "as-yet-unsuccessful" is a bit of a stretch.
Obviously this device will run the Kindle software too, so the whole Amazon library is available to you - in addition to the Google Play library & app store.
Kindle already had a huge ebook ecosystem, and people bought dvd/music from Amazon (in physical media), so it was natural to think of them as a content store.
They really could use some mic training. The guy talking about the "porn video game" for a few minutes was also really surreal (I think it's "Corn" or "Torn" or something.)
"If I want to show someone content on my tablet wouldn't we just sit next to each other and look at the tablet?"
To me this seems like one of those features that you wouldn't want until it becomes available, almost like Bill Gates saying how we'd never need any more than whatever ridiculously small amount of ram he mentioned. Whatsmore, It sounds like a very interesting feature to be designed around to me, and keep in mind that the same idea of instant one-to-one sharing is one of the selling points of the galaxy s3.
OMG so boring. Google needs to learn how to put on a show.
Also, Hangouts is G+ best feature but sadly it is really hard to get people together on it. Why when I invite someone do they not get an email or IM?? They only get notified within g+ itself and it isn't easy to find the invite. On recent jobs several times I've tried to get meetings together on g+ only to resort back to conference calls (!!? WTF??) every time because people couldn't get on the Hangout. That is a real shame.
Head mounted cameras with live video streaming and two way audio, over commercial cellular networks, using commodity hardware (well, prototype commodity hardware), is still a thing. I'm more into the thing as a compute device than headmount camera, but until they come up with a good audio UI or chording keyboard (ideally as glove), they'll be really limited on input, so video recording is probably the best use case.
(I worked for a guy who was doing this in the 1980s, with ~50 pounds of equipment in a backpack, a 5W radio transmitter on his head, etc.)
That part is cool, but it's also "FaceTime with a head-mounted camera". They spent most of their time showing something that is better but not unique. I was under the impression that Glass is supposed to put a UI in your field of vision, yet the entire presentation focused on the camera.
Project Glass is interesting ... but this demo didn’t show anything new.
But when Apple copies Android's notification center (which has now been massively bumped in JB) that is a huge thing and everyone is up in arms about what sort of geniuses the people at Apple are.
They released the next step in their roadmap. The device will be released to US developers in the IO audience who pre-order and they will be able to hack on it at the beginning of 2013.
What hasn’t happened? live video streaming and two way audio, over commercial cellular networks, using commodity hardware?
I have been doing that with my phone for a few years.
Also, look at the part of the glasses behind the ear, now look at any recent smartphone teardown and see how they compare in size.
I’m sure Project Glass will eventually be interesting, this demo was really cool, but hardly a technological achievement. You can do the same thing by strapping a phone to your helmet.
I'm referring to the "shrinking at will." If you can back, well, anything you're saying up about how Glass isn't impressive beyond "lol open up a phone," I'd love to hear it!
> I’m sure Project Glass will eventually be interesting, this demo was really cool, but hardly a technological achievement. You can do the same thing by strapping a phone to your helmet.
Yeah... you don't see any technical challenges going from the latter to the former? Sounds like you made up your mind a "years ago" when this apparently already existed.
Apple ask everyone to turn of wifi at WWDC to make their iPad work and that is awesome.
Live, two-way audio/video-streaming from AR computer glasses during a freakin' parashoot jump over regular cellular networks however, that is not really that much of a big thing?
Excuse me. What standards are you applying to whom where?
Glass was the "one more thing..." moment for sure; heard that there was a long line to purchase them for $1500 per -- any comments from HN owners?
Met with GOOG employees today who were testing newer versions, better resolution & new comms. I wasn't allowed to wear it but it looks bulkier than I imagined.
The odd thing is, during a meeting with an employee who was wearing Glass, it was hard to figure out where to focus my eyes on their face -- it was like talking to someone with a lazy eye.
I don't actually get the IM or the notification on my phone. Strange.
In any case, 99% of the designers I work with and 75% of the developers have iPhone/Mac and don't use either Android or gchat although they all have gmail/google accounts. So if they got an email they would be notified, otherwise, they never know.
Without the link it is also really hard to just tell people to go to G+. The way to join the hangout if you don't have a link is hard to find
This is not just an opinion, like I said, I actually tried to set up hangouts several times and these are the reasons it failed. Just my experience.
I get either a G+ or GTalk notification on my phone, it pops up if I have Google+ open and if not, I get a GTalk notice in Gmail. Otherwise I'm displayed as offline.
Also, I don't know what you found boring. Did you want more faux wood and plastic or more fancy words? I mean, I cringed enough at "buttery", I couldn't have handled the "magic" of alternative presentation styles.
I feel pretty safe in saying that IO is... pretty geeky.
> So yes, Nexus Q is a "small Android-powered computer that's designed to live in your home", connecting to speakers and the cloud, as well as the Google Play store. It's controlled from a smartphone or tablet, but not to stream content from the device to the Nexus Q.
Nobody cares about how the streaming is achieved technically, and I think the "social" aspect is massively over-sold. If I want to show someone content on my tablet wouldn't we just sit next to each other and look at the tablet?
The Nexus 7 apparently already has HDMI out (I think) so I just can't see anyone forking out $299 for some bizarre social content streaming concept party.