Last week's flurry of Google TV announcements from Google and Intel is just a taste of things to come in the home theater market. Whether they're powered by Intel, ARM, or MIPS, or whether the software is from Google or Microsoft, TVs are about to get a whole lot smarter and more connected. But the first crop of TVs with serious silicon inside will have to go through a kind of usability adolescence—they'll be just smart enough to do a whole lot more, but they'll be all that much harder to control and communicate with. Eventually, we may find that the best way to use them is to talk to them, and maybe even gesture at them.

The Google TV hardware unveiling was a case in point. The first Google TV software will be search-driven, and search requires that you enter strings of text, and right now, strings of text require a keyboard. As we noted in our launch coverage of the first Google TV hardware, a TV that requires a full keyboard to use doesn't really feel like a TV. A keyboard also adds to the cost, and it's one more thing to keep charged and keep track of. In short, TVs with big, clunky keyboards are an awkward concession to the fact that Google wants users to search for things on their television. A keyboard/remote or giant touchscreen/remote hybrid may be like catnip for gadget geeks, but many users will just see a "remote" with an epic number of buttons and just say "no thanks."

But there is a better way, as Google's Android phones make clear. Android's built-in voice search works very well in the phone form factor; it's a rare address that Android users can't find by simply speaking the target location to the phone. Even Web searches work passably well with voice input.

The case for talking to your Google TV

Not only is Google TV built around an x86 port of Android, but the product has a few features that make it a much better fit for a voice interface than the phones with which it shares a code base.

First, you'll be talking to (or yelling at) your TV in the seclusion of your living room. So no worries about freaked-out passers-by, although kids and pets may initially wonder why you're talking at the TV when there's no sports game on.

It's also the case that it's much easier to control ambient noise and environmental sounds in the living room than it is on the street or in some other public venue. Admittedly, screaming children or barking dogs may frustrate your attempts to bring up that YouTube video using voice input, but people for whom this is a huge problem will always have the option of pulling their keyboard off the coffee table and typing in their search string.

So far, voice input has been limited to controlling device operations via commands (this is true with Kinect, as well), but it doesn't make sense to use voice for everything interface-related—you need it only in situations where you have to input a string of text. So you can keep your normal remote for tasks like controlling the volume, or selecting a chapter on a Blu-ray disc, and save the voice input for moments when it can add to the home theater experience.

The final way that voice is a better fit for a Google TV than it is for a Google phone comes from the fact that an Android-powered TV will have an always-on, broadband connection to the Internet. Google's voice recognition is all done on the server side—your Android phone just takes a recording of your voice, does some preprocessing, then sends the waveform up to Google's servers for analysis. The server then sends back its interpretation of what you just said in the form of a text string.

This server-based design means that Android's voice input just doesn't work if you're in a cellular dead zone. But dead zones aren't a problem for Google TV. So your Google TV could theoretically grab your audio input, upload it, and get a text string back much more quickly, cheaply, and consistently than your Android phone.

Nothing's perfect

The main logistical issue that will have to be overcome before voice input could work on a TV is microphone placement. If the mic is on your TV, and is across the room from your mouth, the voice recognition probably won't work very well. Or, to make it work, you may have to do a ton of pre-processing to isolate the signal from the noise.

Note that Google actually did a Google TV voice control demo at Google I/O using a phone for the mic. A company rep talked into an Android phone, which then sent the voice input to the TV. Such a feature in a finished TV product would make a nice value-add for those with Android phones, but Google needs to take the concept and make it cheaper.

It seems technically feasible that the mic could just go on the remote control, especially if the remote is Bluetooth-enabled and can do audio transmission. That way, when you're faced with a text input box, you just hold your remote up to your mouth and talk into it. This may seem like an odd suggestion, but it's no odder than the sight of someone yelling voice commands at their TV from 12 feet away.

You may be thinking that accidental triggering of voice commands would be a problem, but this really shouldn't be an issue. All you need is a button, probably on the remote, that you press to tell the TV, "hey, I'm talking to you." After all, this is how voice input works on Android phones—before the phone starts listening for voice commands, you have to press the right on-screen button.

The next step: gestures

Once TVs get really smart, and contain the kind of multicore silicon that powers desktops today, they'll be ready for gesture-based input. Microsoft's Kinect product puts the software maker ahead of the game in this area, but others are hot on its heels.

Intel is actively researching gestures as an input mechanism, and the company showed off the progress of one of its partners at this past IDF. The GestureTek demo was quite nice; it managed an attractive and functional multitouch-style interface using only gestures.

Once the silicon for something like this gets cheap enough, it can be squeezed into a TV without upping the cost too much. At that point, a combination of speaking and gestures may be the way that most of us end up using our entertainment systems. Either that, or everyone will get used to keeping a keyboard in the living room.