Product News (aka We Were Wrong): GPNC to release Android HDTV

Remember in April we reported a bit about Android and its future in TVs, and that South Korean manufacturer GPNC would soon be releasing TVs running Android 1.5 built-in? Yep, sure you do. We were skeptical that the TVs would ever come to market, honestly. Well, it appears our crystal ball was on the fritz that day.

It seems the company has now officially announced the launch of an Google-powered TV code named Smartroi, and it’ll be on shelves (in Asian countries anyway) starting in a few weeks or so.

Other hard specs: The TV will be sold in Korea at first and will be a 42″ Full HDTV LED backlit screen, sport a 5,000,000:1 contrast ratio, 500cd/m² brightness, and USB connectivity too. No real hard details on what version of Android will ship with the unit, but support for OS upgrades in the future has been hinted at, so it’ll at least be upgradeable.

Andy Built-In: Lava debuts Android HDTV, to mixed results

A tiny upstart company titled ‘People of Lava’ announced they were going to beat Google with their own version of an all-in-one Android TV set, color us skeptical (and a little hopeful at the same time). It’s good we have websites like Expert Reviews to take a trip to Sweden and see in the flesh the company’s Android-powered HDTV in action. We’re both sad and glad to report that the Android part works well, but doesn’t blend the interface in with the TV part all that well. It’s a blessing and a curse, as it turns out.

According to the article, the Android side of things was quite strong, which features not only the widgets in the picture, but also a full Chrome web browser, a TV app marketplace, a functional Google Maps page and more.

One more caveat, and its fairly big: The edge-lit LG-powered display isn’t cheap, or even economical really. When the Scandinavia model ships in early September, its MSRP will be around £2,000 (around $2,898 USD) for the basic, 42″ model — or roughly $2,700 more than plugging in a Bonux box to your current TV for Android functionality. If you like your widgets integrated though, this looks like it might be the Android model to beat, for now.

Reconsideration: Samsung still pondering Android powered HDTVs?

New reports are indicating that Panasonic and Samsung were going to pass on Sony / Google / Intel’s Google TV initiative as being too expensive to make, but a report today released by the Korea Herald indicates that may not be the case, and that they’re seriously reconsidering powered by Android HDTV as a very real option.

While LG has stated it “has not considered” producing a Google TV, the newspaper states an executive from Samsung says they are looking into making Android-powered HDTVs at some point in the future. It could signal a new wave of Android powered TVs and a new movement in the industry at large.

We estimate three or four more rumors with varying degrees of reliability before we hear anything official from Samsung or Panasonic themselves.

Android and HDTV: GPNC Korea giving it a shot, apparently (with caveat)

We’ve reported that Android TVs have been flagged as too expensive to produce by some companies already, but some companies overseas don’t see it that way apparently. Witness this story reported by several blogs, including Engadget:

Anyone opposed to another Android packing TV announced by a foreign manufacturer of questionable validity? We figured you weren’t, so say hello to GPNC Korea’s television running Android 1.5 on a 833 Mhz ARM Cortex A8 chip. While it’s claiming NTSC and ATSC support among other broadcast standards, the USA doesn’t appear to have made the cut for availability, with 10 different countries including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Poland, Australia and Dubai. Practically identical to People of Lava’s effort, it is slated for 42-, 47- and 55-inch LED-backlit versions with no real price or date, and even this promo pic looks very familiar. GPNC managed to keep the screen clear of error messages this time, but its website is flagged by Google as “dangerous” so we’d probably wait for something more official before making any attempts to preorder.

Now that last bit makes us nervous, but we assume its only a matter of time before some mainstream brand in the States releases something similar to this. Android is too flexible and easy to manipulate for widget-conscious HDTV manufacturers to ignore for long.

Andy Not Coming: Android HDTV sets deemed “too expensive”

Sure, $150 3D glasses for HDTVs are just fine with them, but according to Bloomberg in a recently published article, Samsung and Panasonic have drawn the line at the rumored Google TV initiative, stating that adding Android doesn’t fit their needs from an economic standpoint, which is sort of a shame.

Panasonic VP Bob Perry stated the Intel hardware needed to run Android “adds too much to the cost of the set,” and Samsung pretty much said the same thing. So it looks like an Android set from those companies won’t happen for now. It’s sad given the decent but not extraordinary nature of the ‘widgets’ on HDTVs right now, that could be improved in terms of speed and flexibility by a system like Android.

We’ll keep an eye out for this as it develops.