Since this is an Android device I thought I would post this note in this group.

Some of you might know that the Logitech Revue is a Google TV device that runs Android.

Logitech has recently discontinued the device but Sony still make a Google TV appliance and it's integrated into many of their TV's Also LG has entered into a partnership with Google to incoporate GTV into their TV's. I saw a few at CES and it is quite impressive.

Anyway since Logitech is discontinuing the device you can now find refurbished ones on Amazon for $79(US). That seemed cheap enough to get just to play with so I purchased one. Note that Amazon will actually ship this to NZ if you want for about $30 so it's a good deal even if you have to have it shipped.

According to Logitech the first release of GTV wasn't ready for prime time and it affected sales considerably. But with Honeycomb it's much better. I guess it was a matter of timing and being an early adopter.

I plugged the device into my TV via my AVR over HDMI, powered it up and the first thing I had to do was wait for a firmware upgrade. This was the upgrade to Honeycomb that had been recently released.

After that some configuration. Because it's a US centric device and designed to integrate into your cable TV/satellite STB you are asked to tell it your zip code and then choose a carrier. That doesn't work here of course so I said add unknown device for TV. That device could either be a TCL T-Box or a Sky TV box so long as they have HDMI out (the device has no other video inputs).  I added a Freeview receiver with HDMI out.

I then connected the HDMI out of the Freeview STB to the HDMI in on the Revue.

So what does it get you?

Well it has a number of cool features on it.

There is nice Chrome browser which has been optimised for TV display. That coupled with a wireless keyboard makes for a nice web surfing experience on the TV. There is Netflix which works pretty well and now saves my having to power up my PS3 to watch Netflix.

There is also an optimised Youtube application which works quite nicely and it's not hard to sit in front of the TV and start Youtube surfing (but mind your data caps!)

When you select the TV button you see the image from your TV device. In my case it's the output from the Freeview receiver. But because the box doesn't know about the Freeview receiver I have to use my Harmony remote to change channels. That isn't too bad since the Harmony knows about GTV (as you could expect) so I can control many functions on the Revue with the Harmony.

You can even put the TV image into a window and do other things at the same time.

I can see if you had an integrated STB you could see a channel guide (from the zip code you entered) change channels, schedule programmes etc. directly from the Revue. So if I were to upgrade my older TCL cable box to a T-Box theoretically I could control it from the Revue since there appears to be some way to have it learn IR codes. More research required later here. But I would never get the EGP on the Revue of course.

The Logitech provided media player is  a bit limited so I downloaded a video player from the Market for $2.99. This player is much more functional able to play content from USB or SMB shares.

But I do that with a Popcorn Hour now and I did notice because of hardware limitations in the Revue (which apparently don't exist in the Sony GTV box) it cannot play MPEG2 files, files in ts containers or files with DTS audio. Therefore it's unlikely I would use the Revue to play content.

FOr $79.99 it's good value and I have integrated into my HT system now. For me tha main bonus was being able to integrate my Freeview receiver into my HT system so I can watch the few HD shows around with 5.1 audio. Up till now the only I could do that was to use my PS3 and PlayTV.

Plus having access to the Internet in the family room for all of us to see is a useful feature as is being able to watch Youtube on the TV.