Boxee Will Be Bringing an App to Google TV
When Google announced they’d be launching Google TV, I expected that apps would be a huge part of it thanks to Android being the base technology. The first app announced outside of what Google demonstrated that I/O looks like it’ll be coming from the last competitor you thought you’d see targeting the technology: Boxee.
People have been wondering what’s so different between what Boxee provides and what Google TV provides (besides the obvious fact that Boxee doesn’t have official support to tie in with your premium television provider). The answer came from Andrew Kippen who spoke with Candler Blog about what they thought of Google TV and how they’d be adapting their model for the newest player in the game.
We obviously followed the [GoogleTV] announcement and the demo. We think that it would be great to see an open OS such as Android gain market share in the living room. It would enable users to download Boxee on their TV (we will be building an Android-based App) and start using it without the hassle of connecting their computer to the TV.
We have somewhat of a different view of browsing the web on TV. While it was a big part of the Google Demo we believe browsing the web as-is makes more sense on laptops and mobile devices (due to their personal nature, the screen size and the input device) than it does on TV. We look forward to playing with the TV and working with them to bringing Boxee to Android devices.
To clarify, he reiterated that this wasn’t the Boxee Remote app we heard about last month: this would be a full-fledged adaptation of Boxee specific for Google TV.
You read correctly. if there’s a TV platform running on TVs that can deliver a great Boxee experience then we want to be there. That means we’re looking at developing an Android App version of Boxee for the upcoming Google TV.
Now I can see why Rob is so excited about the future of this product and service. When Boxee first landed on Apple TV, users had a strong reason to install it: it brought more than just what you could download from iTunes. With Google TV, the reasoning isn’t as apparent, but it rings a loud bell about what Google has hoped to bring from Android since its beginnings: choice, freedom, and a whole lot of apps.
[via Gizmodo]