“SlingPlayer for Logitech Revue now works with the Slingbox to extend your complete living room HDTV experience to another TV in your home, or wherever you want to watch. Access the SlingPlayer app from Google Spotlight and change channels, navigate the program guide, or watch and schedule recordings on your DVR – all on the big screen.”

Sling Media, which is owned by EchoStar, rolled out a dedicated Boxee app for SlingBox owners last month. These apps are a welcome addition for any SlingBox owner, but also seem like an attempt to stay relevant in an era where TV viewers rapidly move to over-the-top and VOD options. Sling admitted as much with its Google TV roll-out when it reminded users who “haven’t used (their) Slingbox in a while” to update their firmware.

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A mistake of implementation

While admitting that the Logitech Google TV was a mistake, De Luca was clear it wasn’t a mistake of intention or strategy, but one of implementation. In his comments, De Luca reiterated the belief that “Google TV or a child of Google TV or the grandchild of Google TV will happen,” and that “the integration of television and Internet is inevitable.” In other words, it wasn’t a question of whether or not the convergence of TV and the Internet will come to be, but how soon it would occur.

“The idea that it would happen overnight in Christmas 2010 was very misguided and that also cost us dearly,” he said.

Of course, Logitech isn’t the only company to suffer from being ahead of its time on a certain product or strategic initiative. Just think of Apple’s Newton tablet or the tablet PCs that Microsoft showed off long before the iPad changed the computing industry. Heck, the Logitech Revue and the first iteration of Google TV are far from the first failed efforts at interactive television: Fifteen years ago, WebTV launched to bring the Internet to TV.

For Logitech, the expectation that consumers were finally ready for this brand new experience was misguided. “It’s always the case people will tend to overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term,” De Luca said

Google TV not complete at launch

It’s not just that the timing wasn’t right, but also that the Google TV software wasn’t quite ready for primetime. De Luca stopped short of calling the initial Google TV operating system “beta software,” but acknowledged that it wasn’t complete and not “tuned to what the consumers want at the living room.”

One big failure was the way in which users interacted with the Google TV interface: a problem that wasn’t helped by the clunky input devices that CE manufacturers offered with products that supported the TV OS. In Logitech’s case, that was shipping the Revue with a keyboard and trackpad that made navigating the TV tricky. And Sony, which had its own line of Google TV products, shipped with a monstrosity of a remote that was more confusing than useful.

But the Internet-enabled content also wasn’t there at launch. While the introduction of a Flash-enabled web browser built into Google TV initially gave some users hope that they’d now be able to watch all the same online video content on their TV that they enjoyed on the desktop, the reality was that premium content owners quickly moved to block access to their videos on the device.

The price wasn’t right

Finally, Logitech overestimated the price consumers would be willing to pay for the Google TV experience. It wasn’t alone in this regard; Sony TV and Blu-ray units with Google TV were priced at a premium as well. However, asking consumers to pay $300 for an Internet-enabled set-top box when Apple TV and Roku sold for $99 was a non-starter. DeLuca said that heavily discounted units are selling now, but they’re also selling at a loss: Logitech’s cost of materials for the Revue is well above the $99 that it’s now asking for the device.

With a $100 million loss attributed mostly to its mistake with Google TV, Logitech is in no position to double down on the platform. While it hasn’t given up on supporting future versions of Google TV, De Luca said he’s optimistic that the operating system will catch on, but isn’t willing to bet the company on it. For now, that means running out inventory on its existing box and taking a wait-and-see approach going forward.

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In a post on the Netflix Tech Blog, device UI engineers Matt McCarthy and Kim Trott shared a presentation that gives a peek behind the curtain in how it’s able to do so. The key is standards-based development using WebKit, JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3.

Cutting-edge features, dynamic updates and A/B testing

Standardizing on WebKit enables Netflix to deliver nearly identical code to all new Netflix-ready devices. By basing its software development kit (SDK) for consumer electronics manufacturers on WebKit, it can also use “cutting‐edge features like querySelector API, CSS transforms, CSS transitions & animations, localStorage, CORS, getters and setters, etc.”

More importantly, by relying on common web technologies, Netflix doesn’t have to develop individual applications for each device framework it comes across. It also can improve development cycles for user interfaces on connected devices. According to the presentation, Netflix typically updates its connected apps every two weeks. By using web standards, it doesn’t need to rely on CE manufacturers to push firmware updates to fix bugs or change the UI; it can do dynamic updates by itself.

Netflix also can dynamically test user interfaces, to see how users interact with them. With web standards, it can redirect different customers to different web pages, feeding them different experiences. By doing so, it can figure out which interfaces are most effective.

Different classes of devices

There’s a wide range of available processing speed and memory, from CPUs that have 600 MHz to those with 3.2 GHz of processing power, and 88 MB of available memory to 512 MB. As a result, Netflix builds in flexibility to ensure it doesn’t overload lower-powered devices with more advanced features.

Netflix currently has three tiers of devices based on their configurations, with the lowest tier having zero animation and small cache sizes. On the top end, devices have animations, large cache sizes and frequent pre-fetching of data. According to the presentation, all devices start in the middle tier and are then throttled up or down based on performance.

Paving the way for other app makers

Netflix’s focus on standards has allowed it to provide dynamically updated user interfaces on devices like the Sony PlayStation 3 and Sony Internet TVs, Nintendo Wii, Logitech Revue and the Boxee Box from D-Link. As more streaming video app makers try to tackle the issue of device fragmentation, Netflix’s approach could provide one way to streamline app creation and maintenance.

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Streaming uses less energy

First the good news: Streaming really does eat up less power than watching cable TV. We tested the Apple TV, Roku’s new Roku 2 XS, the Logitech Revue Google TV set-top box, the Boxee Box and the WD TV Live Plus, and all of them consumed significantly less electricity than your average cable setup. The NRDC estimates that a regular DVR consumes around 32 watts when on, with some of the devices tested by the Council eating up as much as 50 watts. Set-top box makers have started to produce more efficient devices, but those are slow to reach the market. Verizon recently told USA Today that 90 percent of its boxes don’t meet meet Energy Star criteria yet.

A multi-room DVR setup consumes 617 kWh per year, according to the National Resources Defense Council. Picture credit: NRDC.

An Apple TV on the other hand consumes less than 2 watts when streaming HD video from Netflix. That means that you could theoretically run 16 Apple TVs with the same power that is needed to run a single cable DVR. Of course, that’s a bit of a hypothetical situation, so let’s go with one of the examples used by the NRDC instead. The Council estimated that a typical multi-room DVR setup with one DVR running on high gear for nine hours a day and two clients each used for three hours a day uses a total of 617 kWh per year (check out all the details in its study).

If you replaced the entire setup with Apple TVs and streamed Netflix on them for the same periods of time, then you’d use merely 10.4 kWh per year. And if those numbers don’t really mean that much to you, consider this: The electricity of this multi-room DVR setup alone would cost you close to $70 per year, based on a national average of $0.11 per kWh. The three-room Apple TV alternative on the other hand only costs about $1.15 per year.

Some devices are greener than others

Not all streaming devices are created equal, and our tests revealed that the same is true for their energy footprint. The Apple TV is by far the most efficient device on the market, impressing with low consumption even during HD streaming and close to zero impact during standby. On the other end of the spectrum are devices like the Boxee Box and Logitech’s Revue, which both consumed around 13 watts while streaming HD content.

Check out a detailed comparison in the table below:

A few points worth noting:

• The culprit for the high consumption of the Logitech Revue and the Boxee Box seems to be Intel’s CE4100 Atom processor that both devices are based on. Boxee’s sleep mode also doesn’t really save any energy, but the device can be turned off with a dedicated on-off button, which helps to significantly reduce its energy consumption. Logitech’s Revue doesn’t even offer a standby mode because it’s meant to be used in conjunction with other always-on devices.
• Roku’s streaming performance is almost as good as the Apple TV’s, but its standby mode is a bit of a mystery: The device uses as much electricity when in standby than it does when it’s on.
• Penny pinchers may want to take notice that you can save a little bit of electricity by streaming the content via Ethernet as opposed to Wifi. It’s not enough to really make a dent, but it should also help to improve your Netflix quality.
• We measured all of this with the help of a Belkin Conserve energy monitor, and streamed an episode of Mad Men in HD in each instance.

But is it really greener?

Getting rid of your power-hungry cable box and replacing it with a lean and green streaming device can obviously save you some money on your utility bills, but is it really greener? Doesn’t it just outsource the same functionality to some data center that serves up Netflix content?

It’s true that the video bits have to come from somewhere, but a number of studies have shown that cloud computing as it is used by Netflix to serve up video actually could lead to billions in energy savings. Part of that has to do with the fact that cloud computing helps Netflix to only use servers when it needs it and customers are actually watching.

Compare that to your average DVR, which is constantly recording a half hour buffer of whatever station you watched last, and it becomes clear that on-demand video viewing in combination with an energy efficient streaming device may be the greener way to go.

Image courtesy of (CC-BY-SA) Flickr user jonathan mcintosh.

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Here are five reasons that make the $99 Logitech Revue worth buying:

1. The browser. This one is a biggie. A browser on your TV changes everything. Yes, Google TV has been blocked by virtually all major broadcasters, so you won’t be able to watch any videos from ABC.com or Hulu. However, you will find yourself in countless situations where current events and live concerts are streamed online, and most of them will be viewable just fine from your Google TV browser. Coachella? Check. NASA TV? Check. Professional video game players battling each other online? Check.

I know, the skeptics out there will still say, “But I don’t want to surf on my TV.” The good news is: You don’t have to, at least not in the traditional sense. There are now dozens of websites optimized for viewing on browser-based TV platforms. Check out some of them in Google TV’s Spotlight Gallery. YouTube on TV alone is so much better than any of its previous iterations on connected devices.

2. The Android remote app. Google TV remote controls have been the subject of a lot of mockery. I actually like the Revue keyboard, but I have to admit it’s not something I want to have on my lap all the time either. Luckily, there’s a really good Android app to control your Revue available, which not only simplifies the experience, but even offers voice input. It’s powered by Google’s speech recognition technology, so searching for a TV show is as easy as getting directions while you drive.

3. Honeycomb. I will admit, the current Google TV platform isn’t much fun to use. It’s overly complicated, giving you too many options to get to the stuff you really want. However, things are supposed to get much better with the platform’s next iteration, which is based on Android 3.1, also known as Honeycomb. And the good news is: Logitech’s Revue will support that version just fine, which may just make the Revue the most affordable hardware running Honeycomb, period.

4. The app store. Google TV currently doesn’t have access to the Android Market, but this is expected to change later this summer when it gets that Honeycomb upgrade. Some developers are already busy putting together apps specifically for the Google TV, but countless others may just take what they have developed for Android handsets, tweak it a little and make it available to Google TV users as well. Some of that will undoubtedly be a UI nightmare; a TV screen simply isn’t the same as a mobile phone.

However, if you’re an Android user, take good look at your handset. Maybe you’re like me, and you have apps from some of your favorite radio stations on there. Wouldn’t it be great to hear their music with the best speakers you have in your house? Or how about some of the casual games you have on your Android tablet: Woudn’t you love to play them on a bigger screen? A few months from now, Google TV users will have access to more apps than on any other TV platform — and some of those apps will be worth the purchase of this device alone.

The gateway used by Lighting Science to connect an Android tablet to mesh-networked LEDs.

5. Android @home. This could be the secret killer app of Google TV. Later this year, Google and some of its partners will start to sell a first round of home automation devices that directly interoperate with Android devices, making it possible to control them from any Android app. The very first devices to reach the market as part of this Android @home program will be LED light bulbs. Sounds boring, I know, but think about the possibilities. What if the Netflix app on your Google TV automatically dimmed the light once the movie started? What if Pandora could change the tone of the light based on the mood of the music?

There are of course still many reasons why someone wouldn’t want to buy the Revue. For one, a device that may suck less with the next software update isn’t really a good proposition for everyone. Also, future Google TV products from companies like Samsung and Vizio may just be better, making the Revue look outdated. Google TV also still doesn’t have access to Hulu Plus, and the Revue is optimized for people who use cable. However, if you’re currently in the market for a Boxee Box, an Apple TV or a Roku, do yourself a favor and take another look at the Revue. A few months from now, it may just feel like an incredible bargain.

Check out our original video review of the Logitech Revue below:

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In other words: The Revue just didn’t sell. At all. “Sales of Logitech Revue were slightly negative during the quarter, as returns of the product were higher than the very modest sales,” the company stated in its prepared remarks. (PDF) And it’s not like Revue sold well before: Logitech made just $5 million from Revue sales in the previous quarter.

The price cut will mean that consumers will be able to buy Google TV units below cost, something Logitech has accounted for with a hefty $34 million one-time charge. The company now hopes Revue sales will finally pick up once Google releases the next version of its Google TV platform later this summer, which will bring access to the Android Market and other improvements. It then wants to sell more accessories to Google TV owners, which kind of sounds like what then-CEO Gerald Quindlen told me about Logitech’s original strategy when Google TV was officially unveiled a year ago.

Speaking of Quindlen: The big proponent of Google TV stepped down after the company released its earnings this week, with Logitech Chairman Guerrino De Luca stepping in as the acting CEO. Quindlen’s resignation was also prompted by disappointing revenue from Logitech’s core and European business, which resulted in a net loss of $30 million for its first quarter of fiscal 2012.

It may be too early to forecast the future of Google TV from these stumbles, as a number of major CE makers are expected to adopt the platform once the next iteration is available. However, it sure looks like Logitech bit off more than it could chew by embracing the platform early on.

Check out this interview with Quindlen during happier days:

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That’s far below expectations. Logitech had reported Google TV product sales of $22 million for the previous quarter, and estimated to sell another $18 million in the fiscal fourth quarter. The company missed these estimates by more than 70 percent. Tanking Google TV sales were also reflected by a 28-percent rise in inventory.

CEO Gerald P. Quindlen told investors in prepared remarks Thursday (PDF) that he’s still “enthusiastic about Google TV.” He also said that Logitech has scaled back marketing for its Google TV product, but added the company was “fully prepared to re-accelerate those activities at the appropriate time.” A look at the quarterly results reveals Logitech spent 19 percent more on marketing last quarter, with most of that money going towards pushing Google TV products and Harmony remote controls.

Logitech has been a Google TV launch partner since the search giant unveiled its TV play at its Google I/O conference last May. Its Revue set-top box went on sale last October. However, Google faced a huge backlash from consumers and reviewers who deemed the platform too complicated. That many TV networks have been blocking access to full episodes of their shows didn’t exactly help either.

Quindlen said Thursday that he sees “the next generation of Google TV” as one of the big growth opportunities for his company. Part of this next generation will be apps and access to the Android Market, which is expected to be launched at this year’s Google I/O conference, taking place next month.

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A final batch of 2,500 units will be given to developers who applied to a special promotion, which has since ended. All of these units are reserved for US-based developers, since Google TV hasn’t launched anywhere else yet. Mobiture writer Ryan Bates said that he was asked to provide his U.S. mailing address, and told that he’ll receive the unit two to three weeks after November 11.

This isn’t the first time Google has given away hardware to developers to promote its platform. The company has been handing out Android phones to every attendant of its Google I/O conference for the last two years.

One notable difference is that those giveaways were geared towards app development. Google is specifically addressing web developers this time around, because Google TV won’t have access to the Android Marketplace until early 2011. One can expect that app developers will see a similar giveaway once the platform is ready for them.

Want to learn more about Google TV? Then make sure to check out our NewTeeVee Live conference, coming up Nov. 10 and featuring Google TV Product Lead Rishi Chandra.

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I’ve been using the Logitech Revue Google TV set-top box for over a week now, and I found a lot to like, as well as a couple of really intriguing features that hint at great possibilities. However, ultimately, I wouldn’t go out and buy this product — and I have a feeling many consumers might feel the same way. (By the way, if you want to learn more about Google TV, make sure to check out our NewTeeVee Live conference, coming up Nov. 10 and featuring Google TV Product Lead Rishi Chandra.)

The hardware. The Logitech Revue retails for a steep price of $300. For that, you get a nondescript set-top box that’s really just a nice shell for netbook-like hardware, featuring a 1.2 GHz Atom CPU, 1 GB of RAM and a total of 5 GB of flash memory. The Revue connects to your TV through an HDMI output, and it also offers an HDMI input to loop in TV signals coming from your cable or satellite TV box to combine the Revue’s web experience with live TV programming.

The box also makes use of Logitech’s Harmony technology, meaning that it can be used to control other parts of your living room setup, like your TV, your cable box or your receiver, just as a Harmony universal remote would. I didn’t have that much to control (more on that later), but functions like turning my TV on and off with the keyboard worked just fine. The box itself also worked as advertised, but I noticed some audible fan noises at times. Not PC-tower loud, but definitely notable.

The final piece in the puzzle is a full-size wireless keyboard complete with touchpad and a number of remote-control specific keys. Some folks have questioned whether having a keyboard like this makes sense in the living room. Being a geek at heart, I really didn’t have any problems with it. In fact, I found the full keyboard useful for search, and I really liked the touch pad. The keyboard also has a nice feel to it, being lightweight without feeling too cheap, and I quickly came up with my own method of thumb-typing while holding onto it with the rest of my hand when moving about the living room.

The first impression. Google TV is based on Google’s Android operating system, and this heritage shines through quite a bit. The good news is that Android phone users will feel familiar right away with the system, quickly discovering basic functionality like task switching works just like on Android mobile devices. The bad news is that these features may not be quite as familiar for people who don’t know their way around Froyo & Co., and I can see that Google TV could be kind of overwhelming to those users.

Part of that has to do with the fact that Google TV offers so many layers of stuff that it’s at times a bit of a challenge to find the way to what you’re looking for. The system offers apps (Netflix, Pandora, NBA Game Time, Napster and Twitter), a spotlight gallery of Google TV-optimized web sites (Amazon VOD, HBO GO, VEVO, YouTube Leanback, PBS Kids and more), Bookmarks and a list of your most visited sites, as well as search and a Google Chrome browser app to go directly to the website of your choice.

Chrome opens with a simple Google search page, but Google TV’s universal search offers several additional layers of content discovery. It can search your personalized TV listings, provided you’ve hooked up your Revue to a cable or satellite set-top box, offer relevant video search results from around the web and search results from a special Google directory of TV shows. Users can always opt to expand their search to Amazon VOD, content from some of their other installed apps or even the entire web. Oh, and then there’s the podcast directory, plus the personal queue to manage all your subscriptions and web video finds. All these options by themselves are actually very useful, but sometimes you don’t know where to start.

The web experience Some two dozen video and news sites have optimized their experience for Google TV, and it definitely makes sense that they did. Take YouTube Leanback for example: Previous iterations of YouTube on connected devices simply offered access to some catalog shortcuts, but Leanback actually presents playlists based on your personal viewing history as well any optional search terms in a way that’s optimized for the big screen. Others, like Adult Swim, have simply adopted this model, but YouTube seems to do it best.

That being said, the number of optimized sites is still pretty small, and you’re inevitably thrown back to the plain old web every so often when you hunt for content on Google TV, which can, at times, be pretty painful. Flash-heavy sites especially can overwhelm the Revue hardware. Imagine scrolling a very CPU-intensive website on an old notebook, and you get the picture. Even dealing with desktop-optimized Flash video players can be painful on the TV screen. I found myself getting up from the couch more than once to walk up close to the TV and find that tiny button needed to switch to full screen.

I also didn’t really feel the urge to do many things on the web other than watch video, so I didn’t really browse around very much. Still, having a browser that can play video from any site (well, most of them anyway) is definitely a bonus, if only for the fact that you can easily access tons of live streams, no mater where they’re shown. I don’t have Comedy Central, but I watched Jon Stewart’s recent D.C. rally on Comedycentral.com in HD without a single glitch.

The TV integration. This is the part where I can start bickering. I’m a cord cutter, so I don’t have any cable box to plug into the Revue, and there’s no way to access over the air programming with this box, even though I can get some 50 channels with a rabbit-ear antenna, many of which come in full HD. Nevermind, this box wasn’t made for people like me, but for people who actually stick with cable, or Dish for that matter.

I did schlep the entire set-up to my neighbor, who has AT&T U-Verse, and I must admit that the integration of TV and web content is actually really well done. Google TV has access to a Google directory of TV content that lists current and previous seasons of most popular shows, complete with air date. It’s a little bit like Clicker, except Google TV also offers the ability to tune into live broadcasts, or even schedule DVR recordings, if you have the device connected to your Dish service.

Previous episodes are available online in many cases, and going from searching for The Office to watching a classic episode of your choice for free on TBS.com really just takes a few seconds. Often, it even offers multiple choices per episode, so you can decide yourself if you want to rent a show ad-free on Amazon or watch it ad-supported online.

There was some redundancy, as you can navigate both your TV provider’s programming guide as well as a Google TV guide, which means you have yet another layer to deal with. However, what I found most irritating was that some of the more advanced TV integration functionality is only available for live TV, but not for any of the web content. Take picture-in-picture viewing for example; Revue owners can browse a web site while they continue to watch their TV feed in the lower right corner of the screen, but it’s impossible to do anything like that while you’re watching Netflix, or any other web video for that matter. Sure, you can always switch between different apps and Chrome windows, but with more and more live content moving to the web, it only makes sense to offer live video feeds and things like Twitter on the same screen, at the same time.

The good stuff. Google TV offers a number of very powerful features that could be very compelling in the future, but not all of them are very well executed. Take the Google TV Queue for example. Queue is essentially an RSS reader for video content that makes it possible to subscribe to both podcasts as well as TV shows hosted on the web. Users can also bookmark any video they stumble upon to watch it later. The best thing: Queue integrates with your Google Reader, so you can easily edit your subscriptions online. Android users will again find this very familiar, as it’s essentially the same setup used for the Google Listen podcast client. However, the user experience could be better. It’s unclear, for example, why Google TV’s podcast directory resides within my queue, whereas its TV show directory doesn’t.

Logitech also tried very hard to have Revue tap into local content. The box comes with a Logitech-exclusive media player app pre-installed that can be used to play content from attached USB drives as well as sources shared via the local network. Only, the thing really didn’t work for me. It didn’t recognize a hard drive and a Flash drive, and ran into issues when playing content from another drive. It did locate my NAS, but couldn’t access any files on it — and those were all drives that I have successfully used with other networked media players before.

Finally, Google TV’s Universal Search is really powerful, as it allows users to fine-tune which sources to include. Some of the possible sources currently include local media, tweets and Amazon VOD results, but one could imagine that application programmers will eventually come up with a whole bunch of interesting possibilities for this.

The final verdict. I must say I was pleasantly surprised by my experience with the Logitech Revue. There is somewhat of a steep learning curve for a lot of its features, but if you give it a couple of days, you’ll really start to get the hang of it. There’s also a bunch of stuff that could get really exciting in the future, and I’m looking forward to seeing apps come to the Google TV platform in early 2011.

That being said, I’m not going to add the Logitech Revue to my living room setup. The missing support for over-the-air HD TV is a major deal breaker for me, and I suspect that I’m not the only one. Numbers from vendors like Roku and PlayOn seem to suggest that people look to devices like this one to ditch cable, not to make it more appealing, but cord cutters simply don’t seem to be the target audience for the Logitech Revue.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we won’t see some OTA-optimized Google TV devices in the future. A Sezmi-like box based on Google TV, anyone? Having seen what Google TV can do, I’m really looking forward to the next generation of devices for this platform. This generation, on the other hand, doesn’t do the trick for me just yet.

Check out our Google TV first impressions video below:

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Fixit produced another of their legendary tear-downs today, this time examining the inner workings of the Logitech Revue Google TV set-top box. What they found reminded them very much of a plain old netbook: Logitech’s Revue features a regular-sized Gigabyte motherboard, a 1.2 GHz Atom CE4150 processor that comes with a with a 400 MHz GPU
, 1 GB of RAM and a total of 5 GB of Flash memory.

Of course, the Revue isn’t just a netbook with a different label. It has a number of special-purpose hardware extensions, including an HDMI port used for picture-in-picture viewing of live TV and websites. iFixit also took apart the keyboard and found a Synaptics T1021A touch controller, which is the same as the one used in the Microsoft Kin 2.

How does this compare to the Apple (a AAPL) TV? Apple used one of its new A4 processors in its living room device, clocked at 1 GHz, and added a generous 8 GB of RAM. Essentially, the Apple TV specs were very close to the iPad, but Apple tried really hard to give the device a very different form factor. Logitech’s Revue specs, on the other hand, are very similar to those of a netbook, and the company clearly didn’t bother to hide its ancestry all that much. Whether consumers care remains to be seen.

Image courtesy of iFixit.

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