Android TV will now work with movies and games on multiple smart TVs

Jun 25, 2014 20:15 GMT  ·  By

Google has officially unveiled Android TV during today’s I/O 2014 keynote, much to everyone’s excitement.

Perhaps running on the high caused by the success of Chromecast, Google has decided to push even more to enter your living room with Android TV. The tool will run with Android L on hardware like Google TV, as well as other set-top boxes from other companies and, of course, Smart TVs.

Not only will Android TV provide users with access to movies, but it will also allow them to play games if they want to.

Unlike the previous effort that Google made with Android TV, now the product looks more in line with what other companies are offering, including the likes of Netflix. Now, the service resurfaces content from the Google Play Store and also works with partners such as Netflix and Hulu through the interconnection of the accounts for these services.

Android TV will also provide recommendations for new content based on previous watching history, something that other similar services do as well. Furthermore, you can always search for more information on certain shows, for instance and then visit the list with the cast, access one actor in particular and see all his previous works, as well as other information in a Knowledge Graph style.

Even cooler is the fact that users can control the software by using an Android Wear smartwatch. Furthermore, you can also cast content from various devices to the Android TV like you would to Chromecast.

The game playing experience seems to be quite nice based on the demonstration where one person could play a certain title from their tablet, while the other used a game controller. It looks like this is possible for titles in the Google Play store.

The company already has a list of partners ready to implement Android TV on the 2015 lines, including Sony, Sharp and TPVision, while others are, of course, invited to join in.

The announcements were made during the Google I/O keynote earlier today where perhaps the biggest thing was the introduction of Android L, the next version of the mobile operating system that Google wants to also put on laptops, which is an interesting development.

The fact that the new operating system has also dropped the reference to sweets (gingerbread, honeycomb, ice-cream sandwich, jellybean, KitKat) is a bit surprising, but it does seem like Google wants it to appear a bit more mature after the many years that have passed since Android was introduced.