I bought a Logitech Revue with Google TV the other day from Amazon at a knock down price of USD99.99.
I really wanted to like Google TV but in the end, when I received the package I didn’t even get it out of the box, instead I sold it on eBay unopened. It’s a shame I had real hope of being able to make the box fit into my life somehow but even I could not justify it.
Why, I hear you ask, bare in mind I am in Australia:-
- Have to pay for a VPN subscription to circumvent geo-blocking on US content providers like Netflix and given there is no option except DHCP networking on the box had to hack a work around for DNS providers for the unblock-us.com service.
- Have to pay for content providers like Netflix, Amazon instant videos or some other services like that.
- Doesn’t record TV.
- Can’t access network shared media unless you are prepared to set up a DLNA server.
- Netflix doesn’t have the most recent TV episodes in any event, looks like they are 1 season behind or something.
- Can’t access Hulu to watch the most recent TV episodes as they have blocked GTV’s browser.
- No integration with any cable TV boxes here in Australia (that I am aware of).
- Can’t get content through GTV that you can’t get “elsewhere”.
So basically, its the lack of anything new and of content providers that make it easyier to watch stuff that is going against GTV. For anyone that already uses some thing like Mythtv (like I do) I can’t see any reason to get a Google TV.
I’m not sure how the much talked about Honeycomb upgrade will change things, perhaps it does which would be great and perhaps I sold it to soon but I can’t justify this box over Mythtv.