Review of Google TV - Part 2

A couple of days ago, I posted a review on GoogleTV. I talked a little about the ease of set up and the overall premise of turning your TV into an intuitive interface for both the Web and standard programming content.

Here is a quick image of the homepage experience:

After playing with it a bit more, here are some additional thoughts (on the Logitech Revue version of GoogleTV):

• The interface has an appealing look and feel, but there are a lot of frustrating usability misses. In other words, it is hard to figure out how to do some easy items. This includes common tasks like changing settings and scrolling through deep menu lists.
• The device comes with a standard set of applications (Pandora, Facebook, Twitter, CNCB, Vevo, and several others). However, how do I get more? There is no place to find other applications, see what is coming, etc. Much of the promise of GoogleTV is a rich applications center like the iPhone store, but the connectivity or existence of one in is lacking. Perfect example, Sony just optimized Crackle (a free and premium video content site) for GoogleTV, yet there is no app that can be installed.
• On the positive side, the interface has an area to assist with surfing for cable content. To search for movies, you simply click the movies folder and everything that is on right now displays along with how much time is left on the program. There are filters for sports, music, news, etc. This is pretty handy for searching for content versus going through the standard linear cable guide.

Anyway, I still have more to play with...customizing the interface, adding an external drive, general surfing of the Web, etc.

Overall, I am more pleased with where I was with GoogleTV a couple of weeks ago, but I am not sure this is quite ready for prime time yet. It is an geeky edge device that has a cool factor, but not the common adoption qualities yet to make this mainstream.