After Gmail, Google buzz and Google chrome the top executive of cyber world search has now announced Google TV beta.

It is a web TV - an internet facility on your television. Google joined hands with Intel and Sony corporation to manufacture a product which can be plugged with your television set. Hardware will be done by Sony and entrails by microchip makers Intel.

Essentially Google TV is a box like hardware that can be connected to a TV set. You can access internet through television instead of monitor. Contrary to its name, Google TV is not a separate TV but like a cable box or DVD player. Just after declare of beta release, there are masses of exhilaration and rumors on Google’s new product.

Initially it is going to be a box with a remote and will have to be connected with TV to get internet services. You can browse the web using Google chrome, play videos, view online photo galleries, manage your emails and social networking websites and lot more things along with watching TV. This product claims to give you facility of interactive TV. In an interactive web TV you can view ads of your own choice; you can get email alerts and other notifications while watching TV. Additionally, interactive web TV will reduce cost for advertisers and ads optimization will be speedier and ultimate.

This is also being hoped that in near future Google TV could become a better alternate for your cable TV. Being an interactive TV it makes it possible to view TV channels of your own choice and pay for only the specific ones that you watch and also order pay-per-view, whereas on cable TV you have to pay for 50 to 60 channels even if you watch only 20.

Google is paying up on several peripheral devices for their new web TV.  For this reason, they teamed up with Logitech to produce a keyboard for Google TV. Entering text through a remote like phone may not be comfortable for many users but keyboard will be a better option. The Logitech keyboard could probably be a replacement for notebook computers as it gives freedom to the user to work and have fun all at the same time without the hassle to control several devices at a time.

Note: HTML5 has a video tag, but no codec is defined yet. Since HTML5 is not going to be fully defined for 10 years - if ever - it is a moving target so the video space is still open.

One of the most exciting thing about Google TV is it will be able to run on Android OS platform which is a mobile phone platform but now Google is encouraging developers to make applications for Google TV and Android both. Official release date is expected in this fall i.e. fall 2010 which allows enough time for programmers and developers to start creating apps for this new product. Expected price is around $150. Hopefully this product will be turn out to be an exciting endeavour - rich web TV and a great treat from Google!

By Azeema our tech news editor July 2010

Web TV was first introduced by Philips and Sony in 1997 which was later sold to Microsoft and came to be known as MSN TV.

However, the hardware is still known as web TV and is being manufactured by several companies for respective platforms. When we talk of web TV we actually mean this term for a complete group of products, services and technologies that bring web services on your TV.

Fundamentally, a web TV comes with some hardware and an adapter which has to be attached with your telephone and television. First it makes a connection to internet via telephone line and downloads web content and web feeds. Then it processes the downloaded data and displays it on the television screen. For user interactivity and navigational control a remote comes included in the web TV package. Some of the best known web TV products available are Apple TV for Mac, MSN TV by Microsoft Networks and the latest entry in the list, Google TV.

Through a web TV service you not only can connect to internet but also to the local TV networks. Any kind of data like music, video, text, graphics and images from the network or internet itself can be received on the TV set. If you already have an internet connection, with web TV you would get an additional internet port for another user. And if you don’t have internet it’s now fairly easy to purchase web TV and link it to your television and to your telephone line, thus connecting you to the net. There are various cool web TV apps which enhance the interactivity and boost up the user experience and most of them are free!

There are some really exciting features that web TV offers you:

• You can access the internet and media content on web like images and videos.
• It allows you to surf the net, send and receive email to friends, family or business collaborators all from your TV.
• View photos, create photo album and slides shows, download them from digital cam etc.
• Reading eBooks and eMags.
• With web TV the whole family can come together and have loads of fun and entertainment.
• Recent releases of web TV provide new features including a compatible Adobe PDF reader and Microsoft Office.
• You are able to surf the web with same speed as with a broadband connection so it’s fairly convenient for a user’s internet needs.
• Watch regular TV on same device
  

An appealing interface for your internet essentials is accessible as Web TV. Most of users will find it a great companion for their living room in Web TV!