Google TV Android 3.1 update adds apps and a new interface

We showed you Vizio's tiny $99 Google TV and feature-heavy remote control back at CES, but it wasn't quite ready for primetime: here, at Google I/O in San Francisco, we sat down with Vizio CTO Matt McRae to discuss the impending July launch, and got our first real look at the Vizio Co-Star's UI.

One day after announcing Google Music, the company is rolling out a fresh new Google Music app for Google TV. The app streams music directly from your library stored in the cloud and integrates deeply enough into the Google TV system to play in the background and allow you to set up a playlist to serve as a soundtrack to a photo slideshow. Google has promised "future updates" to the music app as well.

Google Music is available now via the Android Market on Google TV, assuming you've installed the Android 3.1 update that brought apps to the platform and signed up for the service on your computer. The app helps Google TV compete with the just released iTunes Match service now available on Apple TV, but obviously we will have to wait and see if this feature-parity checkbox is going to be enough to get Logitech to get off the sidelines for future Google TV products.

De Luca suggested that Google TV was far from ready at launch, going so far as to call it "beta" software on one presentation slide, and that the company made a massive misstep by believing that it would revolutionize television right out of the gate. In short, Logitech "executed a full scale launch with a beta product and it cost us dearly." He added more color about Logitech's failure to read the television market in his remarks:

The mistake, plus "operational miscues in EMEA" cost the company "well over $100M in operating profits." De Luca did throw Google a bone by saying that he believes Google TV will have a chance sometime in the future, but it would be a "grandchild of Google TV" that would do it. Logitech clearly has no plans to help make that happen, opting instead to sit "on the bench" (as De Luca had put it in an earlier call)  until Google can find success.

Plex, the popular media streaming client that already had an Android app, is among the first pieces of third party software available for Google TV. It was only a couple of days ago that Google flipped the switch on the Android 3.1 update that enabled apps on its connected TV software, yet the Google TV Plex app is already available thanks to some advance work behind the scenes. Almost all the Plex functionality you know and love is available, whether you want to stream media from your PC or Mac through your local network or remotely. That includes support for the newly introduced myPlex, whose main attraction is a universal media queue that will remember where you stopped watching on one Plex client and resume from that point on another. Use of the remote control is disabled, at least for now, and there a couple of other minor caveats you'll find in the source link below, but otherwise it's the full Plex experience on your Google TV. A few more apps like this and Google's maligned TV offering might just find itself a fresh breath of life.

The update should apply to both Sony Internet TV with Google TV devices as well as Sony Blu-ray players with Google TV. It doesn't appear that Sony is making any effort to add more access to content as a differentiator, but perhaps its assuming those rumors of new YouTube content deals combined with Google TV's updated YouTube app will go a long way towards fixing that particular problem.

It's been a long while since we've heard anything about Google TV, but the platform just got its big promised upgrade to Android 3.1, complete with an overhauled UI and support for apps from Android Market. Google says the new, more realistic goal for its TV efforts is to complement traditional TV services like cable and satellite with alternative internet viewing options, and to that end the company is bundling in a new TV and Movies app that functions as an integrated program guide with the ability to aggregate content from multiple sources, including live TV, HBO Go, Netflix, and YouTube. The YouTube app itself has been updated to feature dynamic "channels" that begin playing related videos as soon as you type in a search term—think Pandora for YouTube. These content-discovery features are the main focus of this version; Google told us that the apps and Market element will take time to build into marquee features.

We heard earlier this month than a new version of Google TV would be launching this fall, with Honeycomb and apps coming to the TV-based OS — now it looks like the update is imminent. Engadget posted a photo of a "New and Improved" Logitech Revue, with Android 3.1 and the Android Market inside. Details are sparse, and though Engadget says the device is on the sales floor of a "major electronics retailer," there's been no official word from Logitech or Google about the update coming. The packaging looks slightly different, particularly the burrito-looking object with the sparks coming out of it, so it's hard to tell if this is new hardware or just new software in the same box. There's also a conspicuous absence of Ice Cream Sandwich, but we're not surprised given how long the Revue was stuck without Honeycomb. Regardless, this update is what Google TV owners and manufacturers have been waiting for, and it looks like it's almost here.

Update: Unfortunately, these are just stickers, and not updated Logitech Revues — the company told Engadget that the boxes were "prematurely updated with the stickers in anticipation of the next release," which will be automatically sent "to all Logitech Revue boxes that are installed and connected to the internet." You won't have to buy a new one.