By skyforbes 
Google TV’s Disruption “Force Close” and “Wait”
Yesterday at the mall, I walked passed the Sony store to see a TV in the display window showing an error message:
“Sorry!
Application Media Player (in process com.
sony.btv.localmediaplayer) is not
responding.
[Force Close], [Wait]. [Report]”.
Just below the TV the sign below reads, “Wow! A beautiful TV. and Google TV to boot”
This has made me do a complete reversal on my optimism around the new Google TV. Before seeing this, I was very excited that Android was going to disrupt the TV broadcasting industry the same why the iPhone and Android platforms have disrupted the mobile phone industry You see, before the iPhone and Android phones, the carriers decided what functionality and applications you could have on your phone. The iPhone and Android app store/markets, changed this and now the owner of the phone makes this decision thus bring in a new era of mobile innovation.
My TV needs this same disruption. Until now, my cable provider decides what functionality and applications are provided with my TV. The cable box, made by Motorola, has SD card slots, USB slots, and who know what other hardware capabilities but they are shut off by my cable provider. My TV has a picture in picture button, but again, shut off by my cable provider. The user interface on the TV is horrible and has a user experience that is almost unusable. If my TV had a 3rd party app store, I could download apps that could make the USB port usable, I could download a working picture in picture app, or I could download a new UI for my tv, or download apps that would give me new and innovative functionalities.
Now, you can do all this with the new Google TV. So why am I doing a complete reversal on my optimism for Google TV? Because apps crash. plain and simple. You see, smart phone apps crash too, but the core functionality for any phone, the phone calling capability, doesn’t. On a TV, the media player is the core functionality, and on Android, this is an app. Sure, technical people like myself know enough to click force close, and relaunch the media player (Note: on iOS the force close happens automatically but the user still has to relaunch the media player) but everyday people will surely get frustrated with this and return these TVs. Not good. This doesn’t mean that Google TV (or Apple TV) isn’t going to disrupt the TV broadcasting industry, but it does mean it is a couple years away from going main stream and truly causing a well needed disruption.