Google TV Gains New Smart Home Integrations and a Sports Page

Google is adding a new sports center to Google TV, along with new ways to interact with smart home tech, better movie and TV overviews, and a new channel guide. The changes are currently rolling out and will be available on all Google TV devices, including the newly released Google TV Streamer.

Google TV now has a new home panel which connects with smart devices around your home. You can access it by clicking the new “Google Home” tile in the notification shade and use it to control the lights, smart speakers, the security cameras, and more. Also, you can set it to interrupt playback and show you a notification when someone’s ringing the doorbell. Google has also upgraded the Google Assistant voice control, allowing you to control the TV with just your voice.

There’s also a new way to create screensavers with Google TV. You can give it prompts for the kind of landscapes you want to see, and it’ll use generative AI to create a unique new screensaver. You can also set it to run a slideshow of your chosen media from Google Photos. Google is also using generative AI to create AI overviews on the title pages. You can expect “full summaries, audience reviews and season-by-season breakdowns” on carousel cards under the movie or TV show title.

The other big update is the new sports page where you can watch highlights and live sports. “The new sports page in the For You tab brings all of your sports content into one place. Quickly find live and upcoming games, catch sports commentary, browse YouTube highlights and get personalized recommendations to stay in the loop,” Google explained.

Freeplay is a list of free TV channels that you get with Google TV and Google just released a new channel guide for it, so you can “browse by genre and topic and quickly access free channels, including new additions like Heartland, The FBI Files and ION Plus.”

Source: Google