- “Now is the time to start thinking about input scoring” for Google TV, says Google
- No Google TV manufacturers currently use sharp remotes
- Gemini AI features appear to be the reason for this push
I believe there are two types of TV users in the world: people who hate the LG Magic Remote and people who haven’t used the LG Magic Remote. I’m in the former camp, so I’m perplexed by Google’s latest announcement: It looks like something very similar is coming to Google TV.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Magic Remote, it uses Wii-style motion control with similar precision, so trying to point at anything can be frustrating: the cursor drifts with the slightest movement, turning channel jumping into what feels like a game of Wii Tennis. This is an attempt to solve the ongoing challenge of controlling a smart TV remotely, and I don’t think it’s a successful attempt: My kids’ TV has a magic remote and they and I hate it.
But Google doesn’t seem to agree. “Now is the time to start thinking about input scoring,” Google TV developer relations engineer Paul Lammertsma told app makers at Google I/O this week (via FlatpanelsHD).
What is a pointing remote control used for?
To my knowledge, the only consumer TV manufacturer using pointing remotes is LG, and LG does not use Google TV. So what’s going on?
It seems it’s all about Gemini and ever more feature-rich TVs. As Lammertsma explains: “The TV experience we once knew is changing. Gemini is changing the way we discover and stream content with voice, but the way we use the remote is also evolving. Pointer remotes bring motion-controlled input to the big screen, enabling faster user navigation across the Google TV home page and content-rich apps.”
It seems unlikely that LG will abandon its own webOS platform in favor of Google TV. Google encouraging the adoption of pointing remotes in apps strongly suggests that Google or one of its partners is developing pointing remotes for Google TVs. It’s unclear whether support will be backwards compatible or limited to new TV models only.
Making TV remotes is difficult, I know: some are way too complicated and others way too simple. I hope Google has fixed the drift and precision issues that plague handheld remotes and the movement looks like the animation above – not the remote in my kids’ bedroom that’s driving us all crazy.
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