A customer asked this recently. It’s really not that weird of a question! After all, we’re in the age when it seems like every box in your home theatre is trying to be “the only one you need.” Your TV has streaming apps built in. So does your satellite TV box. Your streaming box has ways to give you live content as if it were a traditional cable box. And, if you have a dedicated gaming console, it probably lets you use the major streaming apps.
Before I answer, there’s a surprising history here.
DIRECTV Game Lounge
As further proof that you can find literally everything on YouTube, here’s a short history of DIRECTV’s Game Lounge:
Game Lounge was an interactive service that ran on DIRECTV satellite receivers in the late ’00s and early ’10s. The dates listed in that video don’t sync up with my memory of that time but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Game Lounge ran on most DIRECTV hardware of the day and was designed to look reasonable even on standard definition TVs. There really were a fairly large selection of games and the pricing wasn’t that bad. I agree with the video that it was about $3 a day to play.
This was a time when DIRECTV was doing a lot of innovative things, and even more than today they wanted the one box to be the only thing you used. At that time, you could watch YouTube videos on your satellite box, use it to play local media and even look at photos on your TV. There was even a thriving third-party app store.
So what happened?
Most of those next-level services were totally gone by the mid-’10s. There are two simple reasons. The first is easy to understand. DIRECTV boxes ran on really slow computer chips even for the day. This was done on purpose to make them more reliable and affordable. Then as now, you didn’t need a lot of fancy hardware to play standard-definition video.
However, this slow hardware meant absurdly long load times for interactive features. That made them a pretty unsatisfying experience. I remember waiting over two minutes for interactive features to load on what was then the fastest DIRECTV DVR in existence.
However, the real reason a lot of this stuff was discontinued was simple: phones. Before about 2005, practically no one had a phone with downloadable apps. They existed as early as the mid-1990s but they were super-rare. On the other hand, by about 2012 it seemed like pretty much everyone had a device with a decent color screen and a data plan that let you download apps. This meant that DIRECTV was competing with your phone for attention and the simple fact was, your phone did this stuff better. Most phones had processors much faster than DIRECTV boxes (still do) and once you downloaded an app it would load in seconds, not minutes.
We all know now that doing something like checking news or weather, or playing a casual game, is much better done on a phone. It doesn’t interrupt others who are watching TV and it just happens faster or more smoothly. That’s why to this day the browsers on most smart TVs simply go unused.
So what about today?
New hardware like DIRECTV’s Gemini is faster and more capable than ever. Gemini is based on the Android TV operating system which is a sort of sister OS to the Android on your phone or the Chrome OS on your Chromebook. It’s pretty likely that something like Gemini could play games at least as well as a 3-year-old phone. Other Android TV-based boxes have joystick or gamepad support, so I’m sure it’s already in the code. What’s holding DIRECTV back from allowing games from the Google Play Store on their devices?
I don’t know. What I do know is that DIRECTV evaluates every app to make sure it will be a good experience on the Gemini. That takes time. Not every phone app works well on a streaming device, and I’m sure DIRECTV doesn’t want ad-supported apps. So at this point I don’t think it’s the hardware that’s holding things back, it’s probably the logistics and the experience.
In the meantime, if you’re looking to upgrade and find out what Gemini is all about, let’s talk! The experts at Signal Connect are here for you. We’re ready to answer your questions and we can take care of the entire upgrade process with our excellent customer service. Call us now at 888-233-7563. If it’s after hours, fill out the form below and we’ll get right back to you.
