Android TV begins its metamorphosis into Google TV with a new visual refresh

Google has already made clear its plans to shift away from Android TV over the course of the next two years and toward its new golden boy, Google TV. It has a more intuitive, modern, and discovery-oriented interface. Now, Android TV has begun to take on some of its qualities – a few new features cause it to mimic the UI design of Google TV, showing that the latter will consume the former before long.

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The new interface now features the same three tabs that Google TV has – Home, Discover, and Apps. As you can see from the images above, it’s easy to mistake the new design for Google TV itself, but it is, in fact, Android TV. It almost looks like an unpolished version of it, actually. Though the Home tab functions a lot like it previously did, there are a few new segments here – “Favorite Apps”, and “Play Next”. It’s likely to gain more new sections as time goes on too, as Google TV features an ever-changing selection based on what’s relevant.

The Discover tab looks the most like Google TV and features movies and TV shows that are trending, along with personal recommendations according to what you’ve already watched. It’s no “For You” tab, but it’s close.

Oh, and there’s an “Apps” tab that shows you all of your installed applications as well, but Android TV already showed you all of your apps – this new tab just shows them to you in a way that more closely reflects Google TV’s design. The United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, and France should all see this update soon, and more countries will get it shortly thereafter. The fact that Google was able to roll all of this out with one update is a great start toward its promised path, and once the transition is complete, I imagine that the “Android TV” branding will simply dissolve as a result.

With Google TV rolling out to Sony’s new Bravia lineup of devices, as well as TCL‘s TVs, Google seems to be working quickly toward the software merger. Though there is some debate regarding what Project Hailstorm is, if it is, in fact, a way for the company to rapidly adapt Google TV to all relevant devices, then today’s news only further cements that theory. We’ll have to continue to speculate until we hear more though, but that’s half of the fun! Join us in the comments to discuss.