- “Now is the time to start thinking about signal input” for Google TV, Google says
- No Google TV manufacturers currently use pointy remote controls
- Gemini AI features appear to be the reason for the push
I think 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 baffled by Google’s latest announcement: It looks like something very similar is coming to Google TV.
If you’re not familiar with the Magic Remote, it uses Wii-style motion control with similar precision, so trying to point at anything can be frustrating: the cursor moves with even the slightest movement, turning channel hopping into what feels like a round of Wii Tennis. It’s an attempt to solve the current challenge of controlling a smart TV from a distance, and I don’t think it will succeed: my kids’ TV has a magic remote and they and I hate it.
But Google seems to disagree. “Now is the time to start thinking about signaling the input,” Google TV developer relations engineer Paul Lammertsma told app creators at Google I/O this week (via FlatpanelsHD)
What is the point of a pointing remote control?
As far as I know, the only mainstream TV manufacturer that uses pointing remotes is LG, and LG doesn’t use Google TV. So what’s going on?
It seems to be all about Gemini and increasingly feature-packed TVs. As Lammertsma explained: “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, unlocking faster user navigation through the Google TV home page and within content-rich apps.”
It seems unlikely that LG will ditch its own webOS platform in favor of Google TV, so Google encouraging the adoption of in-app remotes strongly suggests that Google or one of its partners is developing remotes for Google TVs. It’s unclear whether support will be backwards compatible or limited to new TV models only.
Making TV remotes is hard, I know: some are too complicated and some are too simple. I hope Google has fixed the drift and precision issues that plague handheld remotes and that the movement looks like the animation above, and not like the remote in my kids’ room that drives us all crazy.
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