Google reveals vision to merge web and TV

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Google unveiled plans to deliver video from the web to high definition sets. But a glitch during a demo suggests it might not yet be ready for prime time.

TV has already made its way from big screens to mobile devices, such as the iPad. Google wants to go one step further -- to allow video from the web and from TV to play on a high definition set.

They're calling it Google TV. It will require a new set-top box to route all the sources, a faster processor and a new kind of remote control.

Google has already lined up Sony, Logitech, Intel, Dish Network and Best Buy as partners. This will result in a marriage of TV and the web.

"These are completely separate worlds for most users. One world, people where I have all this great, compelling content on my television -- my favorite sports, my favorite shows, my favorite movies, and then this other world where I have all my great web video and my favorite websites," Google product manager Rishi Chandra said.

Consumers will be able to do a Google search to find their video.

There are predictions that watching video over the internet will grow steadily and surpass broadcast TV viewing in 2020 -- just 10 years from now.

It's now trying to excite these developers to create applications for TV viewers, just as they have done for smart phones.

And they've got ideas.

"While you're watching the Oscars or something like that, and all your friends are watching it, all at the same time, you can all be talking on the screen back and forth," social network developer Robert Scoble said.

New technology can suffer from glitches and Google ran into one during this demonstration. Its wireless keyboard wouldn't work and the presumed culprit is a room filled with 4,000 people using Bluetooth on their mobile phones.

The success of Google TV will lie in the hands of developers, because it's their ideas and imagination that will determine how the system will be used and how it will be embraced by consumers.

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google, intel, business, david louie

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