Apple and Google square-off for duel over streaming video.
If you number among the hardcore techies, your monitor probably measures ten times the size of your television and has far better picture quality and resolution. To you, then, the latest Apple-Google arm-wrestle looks more like a sporting event than an epic struggle for control of broadband’s next frontier. For a billion or so ordinary television viewers, however, the battle between Apple TV and Google TV has some serious consequences. Especially satellite subscribers may feel very afraid, because their dishes threaten to become as obsolete and quirky as rabbit ears. “Streaming video” has come to the marketplace, and as painfully as Hamlet debated “to be, or not to be,” consumers will spin soliloquies as they choose between Apple and its favourite antagonist.
Apple TV is first to market and least expensive.
Already radically redesigned from prototypes that circulated just six months ago, Apple TV is the smallest among the new home entertainment units and the least expensive, ringing-up at $99(usd). The diminutive darling represents Apple’s aggressive move to dominate streaming video, and it has the natural advantage of being perfectly compatible with all of Apple’s fashionable new gadgets and gimmicks. For your Benjamin, you get “regular” television plus Netflix, YouTube, iTunes, and access to everything that runs on iTunes. Right now, “regular” means Fox, Disney, ABC, and BBC, but some of the most popular series—notably “House” and “Modern Family”—are not yet available.
Google insists bigger is better.
Earlier this week, Google fulfilled its promise to deliver a set-top box designed to integrate all your services in one unified interface– cable, internet, and other media in one handy if somewhat ungainly box. Three times the size and price of Apple TV, Google TV offers at least three times the content and almost infinite possibilities. Google’s greatest advantage comes from its search capabilities. Using Google TV, you will see a familiar-looking search bar across your television screen, and you will enjoy the power to search for content on television much as you search for information on your computer. Google also has secured content from the “regular” networks plus TBS, TNT, CNN, and HBO; and you get Pandora, Napster, YouTube, and Amazon VOD. Better still, Google TV has built-in apps for Twitter, the NBA, and CNBC with officials predicting Facebook will join the line-up “very soon.”
Hulu is the wild card.
Gearing up for its IPO, Hulu continues to be coy with its many suitors. Currently in talks with their Google counterparts, Hulu representatives appear close to a deal. Not surprisingly, exclusivity remains a source of dispute, because Google stands to gain tremendous competitive advantage over all of its rivals if it becomes the sole purveyor of Hulu content to web television. Hulu, naturally, asks, “What’s in it for us?” because they benefit considerably from providing content for everybody. Because Apple, Google, and the also-rans hope for brisk holiday sales of web-for-HDTV boxes, analysts expect Hulu and other content providers to reach agreements by the end of October at the very latest.
