Sony Electronics has cut the price of their Sony Internet TV/Google TV Blu Ray player by $100. While this may be a good sign to consumers on the fence about new technology, it’s definitely not a good sign to those invested in Google’s future placement in living rooms everywhere.
A quick glance at the Best Buy price on the Blu Ray player may have seemed like a holiday or Black Friday sale price however even at the official site the price has been cut by $100 which means that’s the price. The Sony Internet TV/Google TV Blu Ray player came out in late October with an MSRP of $399 so now it’s $299. The non tech-savvy consumer can pick up a Blu Ray player for less than $100 these days so getting them to spend the extra $200 on Google TV features is a hard stretch.
Google TV came out on a mission to get the Google experience on the biggest screen in the home, the television. The vision is clear, families gather around the Goog Tube and watch their favorite programs, interact with the shows and their websites, and enjoy an email or Facebook update during commercials. Who watches commercials, much less sits through them? No more keeping your phone in hand during an ABC family movie, nope it’s all on the Google TV.
The interaction part was one of the best parts seen at the Google TV launch party October 12th in New York City (see video below). The idea was simple, take your favorite program, like Jersey Shore, look it up in an overlay search and you would have access to the live feed, website and archived material on the network site. Wait a minute, nope, not with Jersey Shore, owned by Viacom, or anything on Fox, CBS, ABC or NBC.
Android Tech Journalist Russell Holly speculated in a piece earlier this week that Google TV would not suffer because the networks were blocking access to their websites.
Holly’s theories definitely have merits but is Sony’s price slash an indication that maybe Google’s OEM partners don’t have the patience needed to see a successful run?
Source: Tech Crunch
