Google TV Aiming for Video Calls From Your TV? Taking Social TV to Another Level?

Posted by Richard Kastelein in Writers on October 04, 2010  |  0 Comments More from this author  |    |  Follow Richard Kastelein on: Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube

Just after Skype and Facebook wedding rumours inundated the web  and Cisco's aims at tapping into the TV video conferencing space erupted, it now seems that Google TV has naturally entered the fray with John Biggs at Techcrunch reporting today that Google TV's secret ammo may include video calls From Your TV due to Logitech's Revue set top box (STB) will likely work with Logtiech HD cameras like the C910.

Although not mentioned on the site, it is clear that the Revue will work with Logtiech HD cameras like the C910. While we’ve been able to make Skype video calls on PCs, mobile phones, and laptops for years, imagine if you could do it from the comfort of your couch.

As I said before, the real draw for the new iPod Touch and iPhone is Facetime. It works amazingly well and it’s a visceral gut punch in the happy glands to be able to see the person you’re talking to, especially if your partner is a two year old girl made up partially of your genetic material who is just waking up from a nap with her pillow and Elmo doll.

That means perhaps the ability to use part of the landscape of those huge flat screens being pumped into the market for inserting chat or perhaps even multi video chat with friends all sitting around watching the same program as you are.

Most players in the Social TV space are building apps for a multiscreen strategy (mobile and tables), but market news like this can certainly shift the paradigm back to single screen concepts.

With almost three TV's per household in the US and fragmentation of audiences, there's more than enough room for creating single screen social TV experiences as well as multiscreen. Samsung, Sony, LG, Philips, Sharp, and Loewe are all pushing hard to build application development communities for the single screen experience and pumping millions into it.

If this pans out for Logitech and Google TV it would appear they are certainly covering their bases and it looks likely that they might have real impact and bring web TV convergence to the market successfully.