In the words of our own Mike Prospero, "I won’t get recommendations for Gilmore Girls, and she won’t get the Fast & Furious franchise popping up on her screen." Google TV adds support for multiple user accounts, meaning that you can have your own tailored experience on the same smart TV the rest of the family uses.
Search should be predictably great – it is Google, after all – with intuitive voice search that will pull up shows and movies easily, or jump to a full web search when needed.
That includes all of the major streaming services, like Netflix, Apple TV, Disney Plus and HBO Max.
What are the benefits to Google TV?Īll of the things we love about Android TV will still be there on Google TV, including the Google Play store and its 5,000+ apps. And if you have a device with a camera feed, like one of the best video doorbells, you can view that feed onscreen. If it works with Google Home, it will work with your TV, as well. It also has improved integration with all of your smart home devices. On TVs with far-field microphones (which includes several Sony TVs), that means that you'll be able to use voice search hands-free, and using your Google-powered smart TV much like a Google Home smart speaker. Google Assistant takes center stage as voice interaction gets better support. This is a persistent list that syncs across different devices, so you can add titles to it on your phone, your web browser, and any other device that lets you log into your Google account. There's also a new "Watchlist" that lets you bookmark shows from various apps to watch later. You'll also get more curated suggestions for live TV offerings, whether it's over-the-air programming or a live TV service like YouTube TV. Hopefully that means more suggestions of shows you want to watch, and fewer ads for services you might not want to pay for. The home screen has also been changed to prioritize content recommendations from your preferred streaming services. Other tabs provide quick access to movies, shows, apps and your library of purchased and rented content. The main interface has been cleaned up a bit, with dedicated tabs for live TV and a "For You" tab that puts all of your recommendations in one spot. We had our first real look at the interface with the Chromecast with Google TV review. The biggest changes have to do with user interaction, search and sharing information between devices. While the move to Google TV is as much a name-change as anything else, there are several experiential and functional changes made to Google TV that make it different than any version of Android TV that came before. Over the next couple of years, you can expect everything Android to shift to Google TV, whether it's smart TVs, set-top boxes or streaming sticks.
And by integrating more tightly with Google's own paid live TV service, YouTube TV, Google's looking to better establish itself as the complete solution for modern TV viewing. You can add things to your watchlist from your phone, share content between devices more easily, and get a more personalized experience. It's the main interface for new Chromecast devices and now smart TVs. Google TV unites several of these elements.