Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes.
The move is an effort by Google and Intel to extend their dominance of computing to television, an arena where they have little sway. For Sony, which has struggled to retain a pricing and technological advantage in the competitive TV hardware market, the partnership is an effort to get a leg up on competitors.
The partners envision technology that will make it as easy for TV users to navigate Web applications, like Twitter and the Picasa photo site, as it is to change the channel.
Some existing televisions and set-top boxes offer access to Web content, but the choice of sites is limited. Google intends to open its TV platform, which is based on its Android operating system for smartphones, to software developers. The company hopes the move will spur the same outpouring of creativity that consumers have seen in applications for cellphones.
Google is expected to deliver a toolkit to outside programmers within the next couple of months and products based on the software could appear as soon as this summer.
The three companies have tapped Logitech, which specializes in remote controls and computer speakers, for peripheral devices, including a remote with a tiny keyboard.
The project, which has been under way for several months, was described by people with knowledge of it. They requested anonymity because the partners were not allowed to speak publicly at this point, and details remained under negotiation.
Spokesmen for Google, Intel and Logitech declined to comment. A Sony spokesman said he was not familiar with the project.
The companies appear to be hiring for Android-related jobs. Intel, for example, has listed jobs for senior application engineers with Android programming experience who can help extend Intel’s technology “from PC screen to mobile screen and TV screen.”
Logitech also has several job listings for Android developers, including a position for an “embedded software engineer” with experience building “audio and video products based on the Android platform.”
Based on Google’s Android operating system, the TV technology runs on Intel’s Atom chips, currently found in laptops.
Intel executives have talked for a couple of years about creating PC-like TVs, contending that it will take the horsepower of a mainstream chip to play high-definition movies well on bigger screens. Any success with TVs would help Intel get into a new, high-volume market and possibly offset some of the pressure the company now feels from rivals creeping up into computers.
Sony, however, hopes to gain an edge over competitors by bringing out the first appliances and possibly TVs running the software, perhaps under a new brand. The Japanese consumer-electronics giant, which owns Sony Pictures, is not expected to put its movie content directly on the devices, but will probably have a link to a digital store.
The partners will face a crowded field. In addition to the makers of traditional cable and satellite set-top boxes — Cisco Systems and Motorola — many others have entered the game, including Microsoft, Apple, TiVo and start-up companies like Roku and Boxee, which already stream video from Netflix, MLB.com and other Web sites directly to television sets. Yahoo is also promoting a TV platform that uses small software programs called widgets to use certain Web services.
Anthony Wood, founder and chief executive of Roku, said that a browser-based Google TV box would require an expensive chip and would probably cost US$200 or more, compared with a cheaper alternative, like Roku’s US$80 device.
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