As expected, Google is launching a remote control app for Android phones that lets you control a Google TV box with your phone. The new app should be available in the Android Market later today, and you can use it to change channels, search for content, find a video on your phone and send it to your TV using the share button.
The mobile app also works with Android’s speech recognition features, which means you can search for content by speaking into your phone’s mic. You can also bookmark content using the app by hitting the star button at any point.
Google also plans to offer an iPhone app soon.
Today’s Google TV update also improves the Netflix experience, offers a picture-in-picture “dual view” option that lets you surf the web in one window while video continues to play in a smaller window, and adds a new movie search results view.
Now if only Google could get major TV networks to stop blocking the Google TV service so you could actually watch all the web video you want using a Google TV device.
You can check out a demo video after the break.
Downloaded and tried. It’s super-buggy, you can get into situations you can’t get out of. And backing up while typing creates a mess on the phone, you have to look at the TV and then type. Not ready for prime time, just like Google TV.