Hasta La Gadget!

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

In the short course of about 18 months, Android has gone from an upstart operating system on a single handset to one of the fastest growing mobile operating systems around to one that’s increasingly being used beyond the handset on new devices like slates, smartbooks and now televisions. As fellow Engadget columnist Michael Gartenberg pointed out last week, the idea of putting the web on a TV has been with us for well over a decade with little acceptance.

But the content and role of the web has changed dramatically since Sony and Philips launched their first devices based on WebTV’s platform. As I mentioned last week, the web has become home for a growing family of mainstream sites upon which we’ve grown increasingly dependent. It’s also become an outpost for both first-run and long-tail video. And the progress of standards such as CSS has improved the display of web sites across browsers and devices. HDTV has quadrupled the resolution of televisions and enabled flicker-free display of text. While few consumers directly connect their PCs to their TVs, several of the former sport HDMI connections, and many of the latter sport VGA connections.

Continue reading Switched On: Android’s shot at TV stardom

Switched On: Android’s shot at TV stardom originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Jun 2010 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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