Google Media Server links TV to PC and Internet, but there's more...

Stuart Corner
Monday, 30 June 2008 01:59

Opinion and Analysis

Google has released a piece of software that runs on your PC and works with equipment supporting the Universal Plug and Play standard, such as the PS3, to enable you to display, on your TV media files stored on your home network or on Google-owned sites like Picasa and YouTube. But combine this with something Google was playing with two years ago and things get really interesting.

You can download and install the Google Media Server via the Google Desktop blog where software engineer David Garcia says: "It uses Google Desktop technology such as Desktop gadgets for the administration tool and Google Desktop Search to locate media files. All you need is a PC running Google Desktop and a UPnP-enabled device (eg a PlayStation 3). At the touch of a button, you can then: access videos, music, and photos stored on your PC, view Picasa web albums [and] play your favourite YouTube videos."

There would seem to be no reason why the scope of this little gizmo could not be extended to pull down information from the Internet as a whole. But now suppose it did this automatically: finding information that was relevant to and expanded upon whatever programme you happened to be watching on the TV, and displayed this on your PC?

You might be wondering what I'm smoking, but take this article from MIT's Technology Review back in August 2006. It said: "Pretty soon, Google may also know what TV programs you watch - and could use that information to send you more advertising, leavened with information pertinent to a show."

It explained that "prototype software, detailed in a conference presentation in Europe...uses a computer's built-in microphone to listen to the sounds in a room. It then filters each five-second snippet of sound to pick out audio from a TV, reduces the snippet to a digital "fingerprint', searches an Internet server for a matching fingerprint from a pre-recorded show, and, if it finds a match, displays ads, chat rooms, or other information related to that snippet on the user's computer."

The MIT article went on to say: "Google research director Peter Norvig predicts that the prototype, which uses an audio identification technique invented outside Google and applied to a uniquely large database of recorded sound, will eventually evolve into a product. And it's attracted plenty of attention from technology watchers, who see a big potential payoff for Google and other companies if a system for bridging TV and Web content can be made practical (my emphasis) For now, though, it's still an early-stage research project."

Seems to me that the Google Media Server is that bridge. Good news for some, I guess. But despite the claims made in the MIT article about user privacy not being at risk, I was not impressed at the time , and I am still not impressed.