Google TV Gets Google Home Panel, AI Wallpapers, New Sports Page

To celebrate the launch of the Google TV Streamer this week, Google is pushing out a handful of big features to the Google TV ecosystem. Previously announced AI wallpapers and the Google Home panel will land on all Google TV devices, plus a new Sports page is here to give you, well, sports.

When Google first showed off the Google TV Streamer back in early August, they revealed a new Google Home panel that would be accessible to users, giving them the power to turn on/off lights, control thermostats, see camera feeds, and more. This new panel showcases favorites that are setup in the Google Home app, plus you can dive into almost all of your other smart home devices through this new Google TV area.

With a device like the Google TV streamer, which has a new remote and a customizable button, you can set this button to open up the Google Home panel from wherever. Otherwise, you’ll hold down the Home button for a couple of seconds to open the Google TV settings panel where you can then choose Google Home.

For AI wallpapers, you’ll simply find a new screensaver option called Custom AI Art that lets you describe how you might like a wallpaper on your TV to look or you can let it inspire you with something it creates on its own. It’s similar to the AI wallpaper generator on Pixel phones, only now on your TV.

Now that football season (both college and the NFL) in full swing, Google TV is getting a Sports page in the For You tab. This section “brings all of your sports content into one place,” with shortcuts to live and upcoming games, YouTube highlights, that sort of thing.

Two other notes –

• AI overviews of shows/movies: Google is also rolling out new AI overviews on content pages. These are supposed to better describe content you may want to watch, with full summaries, audience reviews, and season-by-season breakdowns.
• 150 free channels: Google TV’s Freeplay now has 150 channels of content you can watch for free. In addition to all of the channels, Google is going to update the channel guide to help you browse by genre and topic.

Google says that all of this stuff will start to rollout as early as today, and yes, this is coming to “all” Google TV devices.

// Google