Marvell unveils a smarts inside subsequent era of Google TV
Marvell, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor designer, announced Thursday that a subsequent era of Google TV will be built around one of a chipsets. The specifications of a anxiety pattern show, predictably, a substantial allege in energy and chip formation over a initial era of Google TV: For example, Marvell’s Armada processor is a dual-core chip, as against to a single-core Intel Atom processor found in Logitech’s first-generation Google TV product. That’s welcome, though a categorical problems with Google TV so distant have been business-model and program shortcomings. In other words, even if a Marvell-powered Google TV is some-more absolute and reduction expensive, it won’t indispensably be some-more appealing.
According to Marvell co-founder Weili Dai, a semiconductor height her association designed can hoop high-definition 3-D cinema and video games in further to smart-TV applications. One censure about a initial Google TV products, that debuted in Oct 2010, was that a register of apps was thin. But Dai argued in an talk Wednesday that a open height supposing by Google TV will attract a same kind of courtesy from developers that a Android handling complement has for smartphones.
“Many people are essay apps on that platform,” Dai said. “Every day, each hour [they are] building that capability. … What we saw for Android and smartphones in ubiquitous is function now with a intelligent TVs and a Google TVs of a world.”
A bigger jump for Google has been a preference of many critical suppliers of radio programming online — including Hulu, a 4 vital promote networks and several popular wire channels — to retard Google TV from displaying a online versions of their shows. That reflects a networks’ fear that Google TV could inspire people to barter their wire TV subscriptions for giveaway TV online, undermining an critical source of income for a industry.
The programming and program issues have been so poignant that one of a dual strange Google TV vendors, Logitech, abandoned a product final month. That was a few months after a association suggested it had more returns on a section than sales in a second entertain of 2011, call it to condense a list cost from $250 to $99.
Dai pronounced Marvell has cut a cost of a box’s chips to a indicate where companies can “build really affordable devices.” She also pronounced she believes that consumers’ knowledge with a connectivity, application and coherence of smartphones creates them inspired for a identical capability on a large screens in their home. But she conceded that it’s adult to Google and a TV attention to come adult with a business indication that persuades some-more calm providers to welcome a Google TV platform.
“When Android was born, there was a training curve. The Google TV side is a same thing,” Dai said. Google has non-stop adult a TV business model, though now “they need to work within a ecosystem,” she added. “I’m carefree they will solve that.”
Google TV products formed on a new Marvell chips are approaching after this year. Dai declined to brand any of a manufacturers, though during slightest some of them are expected to uncover off prototypes during a International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas subsequent week.
RELATED:
Google rolling out new chronicle of Google TV
Samsung tighten to understanding to creation Google TVs
– Jon Healey
Healey writes editorials for The Times’ Opinion Manufacturing Division. Follow him during @jcahealey.
Photo: Marvell’s anxiety pattern for a Foresight Platform, that powers a subsequent era of Google TV. Credit: Marvell
