The systems works; Revue reviewed again
Posted by Kathleen Maher on April 21st 2011 | Discuss
Categories:
Hardware Review
Tags:
review
tv
television
google
revue
We've been revisiting the Logitech Revue after it's been in the house and operating for several months now. In fact, if we had the time or the organizational skills it would make sense to have second takes on most of the products we review. The first review tends to be a look at getting a system set up and working and so, even if that's not what you want to really talk about, the set up experience colors the review. Especially if it was a complicated set up.
All of which brings us to the Logitech Revue, a set-top box implementation of Google TV. As setups go, the Revue was not particularly traumatic except but it had its mysterious moments. Mostly at the intersection of the web world and the TV world.
Traditional TV works just fine, but when you switch to the Web, the TV would continue playing in the background. Logitech has fixed this with the clearly marked ability to turn the TV off in the PiP screen. There are other tiny little fixes that have been added that are making the Revue work better than ever.
Then of course, we just got used to using the thing. We had to understand that the Revue has a set of controls for poking around the web and a set of controls for using the TV. Usually, when you want to do something on the web side, you use the mouse icon and when you want to do something on the TV side you use the enter key. It makes sense, sometimes, and it's something you can easily get used to.
There are still problems that crop up, music play is not as strong as I'd like it to be which is just plan tragic given the availability of both Napster and Pandora on the Revue. What could be better? It'd be better if there weren't long buffer times. Some how the Xbox seems to have conquered this. Microsoft's FM service does not have the same fits and starts.
Which is actually, what I'd like to talk about here. The system and that includes all the too-many boxes we have around here, the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3, the Orb, the Nintendo, the iPad, the Android phone, and so on and so on. These toys are starting to work much better together—even if it's still sometimes in their own little solar systems. The DLNA machines can see each other and access content. The phones are very capable remote controls (thanks very much Logitech, that Harmony stuff is aces). You can almost feel the little electronic handshakes going on around the house and in general the attitude is cordial.
The best thing about the Revue, to my mind anyway, is that keyboard/remote control. The problem of mouse input is solved with a touch pad and the keypad is there for those emergency Facebook entries and instant messages. Leave it to Logitech to figure out how the marriage of the Internet and the TV is going to work at the controller level. The device, when properly set up, lets you turn on all the necessary devices, TV, set-top-box, amplifier, and choose the proper input, all with the keyboard..
There are lots of things that still need to be done. It was hard to get the thing setup originally and it took some playing with to understand how the Web/TV live together on the device.
There are tweaks required, but IPTV is here. It's yet another example of the Practicality Gap in action. (In short, the Practicality Gap describes what happens to great ideas between the time they are first introduced and when they finally break out. Tablets, MP3 players, and electric cars are examples.) We have had the web, and we have TV, and we have had them together for more than 15 years, counting from the arrival of WebTV in 1996 but we didn't have universal WiFi, we didn't have TV suitable content on the web or web accessible content on TV, and we didn't have social networking. It has also taken a really long time to get DLNA working. Now, it really does. Those pieces of the puzzle have made IPTV part of the family experience. You can sit on the couch and comment on the latest episode of "Glee" with your network, or you can clean the kitchen and listen to your music from the computer in the back room.
It just works, finally.
