Digital TV everywhere. Google, Apple and Yahoo will slug it out

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Google TV, Apple TV and Yahoo! TV. While there are many out there touting its arrival, consumers are already watching TV through their computers, the future is upon us.

Some years ago, I remember seeing a story on 60 Minutes about the future of TV. Living in Australia at the time, in an outback wayward town where we only had four TV channels, seeing this story and Liz Hayes explaining that we’d soon have over 200 channels available to us, through HD (whatever that meant) seemed somewhat futuristic.

Yet, all those ‘beyond 2000’ predictions seemed to have integrated themselves perfectly, and somewhat under the radar.

Back then, I though 200-odd channels were exciting. I wanted to watch CNN and all those American reality shows…like the one with the people stranded on an island. Now days, the reality is much better.

Being the proud owner of a new 27-inch iMac – the screen which adorns my lounge room TV unit – I now watch TV digital through my computer screen.

Alway being connected is no longer a luxury, it’s a normalcy. No wonder the internet giants are looking to cash in.

Google has tied up with Intel, Sony and Logitech for a project which is currently called Google TV. Under this, all the involved companies want to create a technology to make navigation of web applications easy through TV.

It’ll be competing with Yahoo!, which has already launched a ‘Widget Engine’ for TV sets at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this year that will allow consumers around the globe to connect to the internet via their TVs.

The search company will begin shipping the widgets by the end of Q1 2010.

The race is on.