What you need to know
- Google TV will be gaining Android 14 TV OS with new features.
- The new version promises improvements in performance, sustainability, accessibility, and multitasking.
- Next to the new update, there are new Gen AI recommendations to look forward to.
Google TV users are in for a treat as the search giant has announced that Android 14 is coming to their smart television sets alongside the smartness of Gen AI.
Through an accompanying blog post, the new Android version for devices like Chromecast with Google TV promises improvements in performance, sustainability, accessibility, and multitasking to help users have a more engaging TV experience.
The indicated performance improvements promise to bring "a snappier, more responsive TV experience." Google is also adding a handful of energy modes that will help users save power consumption when their TVs are in standby mode. These will primarily comprise of three modes: low energy, optimized energy, and increased energy mode, which are clearly illustrated in the image shared by Google in the announcement post (attached below).
The updates further add new accessibility features such as color correction, enhanced text options, and improved user navigation. These can be turned on or off per user preferences with the help of remote shortcuts. Google TV users with the new software can expect better multitasking as Picture-in-Picture support is coming to all Android 14-supported TVs.
Google has further shared little guides for developers on incorporating the new features on their apps that will help users take full advantage of the new operating system upgrade. As such, the search giant is also releasing Compose for TV in 1.0.0-beta01 for developers, which helps them build apps in new ways.
In addition to these improvements, Gen AI will further bring nifty additions to Google TV users to help improve their watching experience. For instance, if a movie or TV show doesn't have a description on the Featured carousel on the home screen on Google TV, it will now showcase AI-generated descriptions (based on the Gemini model) for the movie or TV show and tell users what to watch.
These AI-generated content descriptions are also more personalized based on users' preferred actor and genre. They can also be seen in users' preferred native language.
The other highlights include quickly pairing the Google TV to wireless headphones or speakers with a single tap with the help of Fast Pair.
