What is needed for a good TV application and how Google TV can help it

Despite what I wrote yesterday about my reservations regarding the Google TV, I do believe it can emerge as a great TV platform. But it need to focus more on what makes an application to be good on TV and less on bringing the web to the TV .

A good stand alone application (not widget) for TV must be:

1. Have TV optimized interface and TV only features
2. Content discovery is for dummies (ideally – content is already discovered and arranged when you sit in front of the TV)
3. Not requires text input (or it is limited to a bare minimum)
4. Entertaining
5. Video rich
6. Clickless
7. Highly personalized
8. Have multiple family members configurations with a single 2 or 3 digits code if needed

Example of good TV application is Netflix Watch Instantly that comes on one of the Netflix enabled devices. Everything about it is just right and meets all the criteria above.

Optimizing web site for TV isn’t enough. Take a look at YouTube. On a computer or mobile screens YouTube is the king and almost everything is right about it. But for TV it would need more than just optimization such as XL version of the site .

A peek at nowmov gives an idea of how different and better a TV-ready version of the YouTube might be. Definitely it is not an optimization of the YouTube site, but rather taking the YouTube content and presenting it completely differently, making the whole experience really entertaining and clickless. While I wouldn’t mind more personalization in the nowmov along with constant learning of my viewing tastes to make it even better for me, the idea is great and portable to the TV screen.

There is a whole set of applications that people try to port to TV. Think about status update on one of your social networking sites. What would be your first reaction when there is a message that your friend has a birthday? Right, writing him “Happy birthday to you! Wish you all the best”. No problem, sure, but wait, where is the remote, how on earth it got under the couch? Heck, why it does not write? Oh, no, I misspelled “birthday”, all over again… Not sure many people would do it on TV; probably most will retreat to the phones or laptops, which defeats the whole purpose of having this application on the TV.

People care less about the software platform on the TV but about what applications they have on it and how well these applications are adopted for the TV screen. Not every good web application will automatically be a good TV application.

When we sit in from of a computer, the most important questions are “what” and “where”. But when we finally relax on a couch to watch some TV, we usually would have an idea of what we want to watch, and the most important question will be “how”. Thus the search is not the most important thing for the TV.

Unlike “what and “where” the “how” question is mostly application specific (look at Netflix, YouTube XL and nowmov). If Google TV will leverage their strength in helping to solve the “How” it can be a winning proposition for consumers.

Google is in a best position in the world to create a TV platform that can address the right issues of creating a good native TV application. With its level of personalization, knowledge of what and how we do it might offer to applications developers something that other platforms will never be able to do.