New tube: Interview with GoogleTV's top engineer

　　by Rick Merritt

　　A day after the announcement of GoogleTV, we spoke with Vincent Dureau, the engineer behind the project that aims to blend Web and TV experiences. Dureau talked about the genesis and outlook of the project, its technical specs and why he doesn't see it as a problem that GoogleTV does not have any cable-TV partners yet.

　　EE Times: What's your background?

　　Vincent Dureau: I started as a software engineer for Thompson CE and worked in early '90's on lots of the original MPEG video work. After that I helped launch the DirectTV network as part of the team building software for the first DTV set-top boxes.

　　After that I helped start a spin off called OpenTV, and in 2006 I decided to join Google. I worked first on Google TV ads as an extension of Google Ad Sense, a service to purchase broadcast TV ad inventory that has been running for about 18 months.

　　EET: How did GoogleTV get started?

　　Dureau: In the back of my mind when I joined Google my primary motivation was to work on something like GoogleTV. So two and a half years ago I went through the regular Google process to start a new project and got ten minutes of fame with top management and they gave me the green light.

　　We needed to build a Version One of the product that set the bar for what I think is a new product category of smart TVs, just like there are smartphones. So we went to a small group of partners who shared our vision, and we ended up with best of breed of partners.

　　EET: How will this attempt to merge Web and TV do better than the many others that have largely failed?

　　Dureau: It’s a combination of timing and product definition.

　　In the US market, it's only now that the Web infrastructure is ready to stream high definition video over the open Internet. I would argue that was not the case even two years ago.

　　There is availability of [Web] content now. Programmers put premium shows on the Net at the same time as on the air. That was not the case even a year ago. And we have enough processing power in TVs and Blu-ray players to run a full browser.

　　EET: Initially GoogleTV only runs on Intel's CE4100 processor and Sony TVs. What's the outlook for getting this on other processors and TVs?

　　Dureau: It was important for us in version one to pick a partner that shares our vision, and Intel is a very good partner. But we've made sure there is nothing in the GoogleTV software stack that is CPU or hardware specific so we are very confident we can run on other CPUs.

　　MIPS and ARM come to mind. We will reach scale by open sourcing the stack. I am sure many chip set vendors are eager to get their hands on the stack and start the porting. It will be available as open source in 2011.

　　Our partners are early movers, and they get a strong advantage. [Sony chief executive] Howard Stringer put it well. "From now on anyone who wants to build GoogleTV will have to copy Sony," he said on stage yesterday.

　　But we are creating a platform that is completely open. It runs in a web browser so anyone can publish to it. Everything will be open source. That’s how you reach scale. Any vendor can take the source code and make products.

　　On memory, pointers and cable TV

　　EET: What are the other hardware requirements?

　　Dureau: We've set a minimum spec for first generation hardware that says systems must have Wi-Fi and Ethernet built in. The also must have USB for extensibility. In addition, all our devices must have HDMI for video in.

　　The vast majority of the population gets TV through a pay TV operator so interoperability with cable, satellite and telco boxes was important. We achieve that with HDMI in and an ability to control the pay TV box with an IR Blaster and a library of codes for all the pay TV boxes in the U.S. On top of that we use an IP protocol to get tighter integration with the pay TV set top.

　　EET: Right now you are working with Echostar's satellite TV service, but you have no cable-TV partners. How will that limit GoogleTV?

　　Dureau: GoogleTV devices will work with your existing cable or satellite boxes because they come with an IR Blaster. Without needing to switch video inputs or anything else, you will have an integrated experience of Web and pay TV.

　　The IR Blaster is a one-way technology. If we have an agreement with the pay TV operator and they implement our IP protocol, which we will publish, we can get a one-click access to some features of their box.

　　So if you want to program a DVR recording you can do that with one click on the IR Blaster if the operator implements our protocol. If they don't you have to go through the menus of the pay TV box to schedule a recording.

　　EET: When will you publish that protocol?

　　Dureau: I can't say.

　　EET: How much memory does GoogleTV require?

　　Dureau: One Gbyte unified RAM for everything including video and application data and 4 Gbytes persistent memory, typically flash, for system and data storage.

　　EET: That's a lot of extra memory for a TV isn't it?

　　Dureau: If you do the math on decoding an HD video signal, it actually takes a lot of memory—100 to 200 Mbytes. If you start looking at connected devices in the market that support streaming over the Web they basically have quite a bit of additional ram for buffering.

　　EET: Are TV makers overloaded with trying to absorb both stereo 3-D and Web into their sets?

　　Dureau: I think the market is clearly ready. The pain point for the manufacturers with connected products is every time they want to add a service to their TV--whether its Amazon, Blockbuster or Netflix--each one is a one-off integration, so for them it doesn’t scale.

　　Consumers wind up needing to decide if they want a TV with Netflix or Blockbuster. By contrast, GoogleTV is a standard platform that anyone can publish to.

　　EET: How is it different from Yahoo Connected TV?

　　Dureau: Yahoo's offering is a walled garden. Service providers have to create the Yahoo widgets specifically designed for that platform. That means they will have a limited number of services. We are comparing tens of services with billions of pages on the Web. It's like WAP versus a browser on a smartphone.

　　EET: Describe the kinds of input devices for GoogleTV

　　Dureau: Every GoogleTV input device will have a keyboard and a pointing devices. When our CE partners go public with those devices you will really like them.

　　All Google TV receivers also include USB so there will be an aftermarket for third-party devices of all shapes and prices.

　　There is an IP protocol we will also publish that will let anyone build input devices that connect to GoogleTV over IP. There will be Android apps to control a GoogleTV box. The smartphone feature I find particularly useful is one that uses voice control from the handset to the TV.

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