But it looks like this may change soon: Google TV owners who visited NBC.com with the connected device have in recent days discovered a new splash screen, promising that “full episodes of this and other shows are now available for free” on Google TV.

The splash screen redirects Google TV users to Google Play, where the app is reportedly already being made available. However, users are reporting that it wasn’t listed as compatible with any of their Google TV devices — likely a precaution to prevent users from installing it on anything by development devices before it is officially announced.

The app also isn’t included in Google Play search results yet. But it seems like such an announcement could be imminent, given that the app and splash screen are already in place.

However, cord cutters in search for an easy way to watch NBC content for free on their TV shouldn’t get their hopes up too soon. It’s likely that NBC’s Google TV app is going to require authentication, meaning that users will have to log in with their pay TV credentials in order to watch. (One should note that Google TV owners have had the option to buy individual episodes of TV shows for some time.)

Google and NBC didn’t immediately respond when asked for comment for this article.

I stopped by the hackathon in its final hours this Sunday to ask Paul Carff, senior developer advocate for Google TV, why Google was interested in sponsoring a giant sleepover for developers: I expected one or two reasons, but he had many. First off, it’s an opportunity to engage Google Developer Groups, the third-party enthusiasts developing apps for the Google TV and YouTube APIs.

It also proves to be a good testing ground for the APIs, giving the developer relations team an opportunity to see how easy or difficult it might be for developers to work with the code and documentation. It can even be an opportunity for fixing errors: This weekend, one participant caught a bug in an app — the team was able to pass it along for fixing.

Also, it was an opportunity to see what people might come up with, given the opportunity to work hands-on with the APIs. Of the people who attended this weekend’s hackathon, Carff estimated that 40 percent called themselves developers, while 20-25 percent volunteered themselves as designers and the rest claimed to be business development-types. “Which is cool, because you need all those people to fill in all the blanks,” he said.

Carff, as one of the judges, said that the criteria they would be using to judge the winning videos would include the level of completeness the developers were able to achieve in just two days, as well as the way in which they used the APIs and a certain “Wow” Factor.

The winning apps from this weekend’s hackathon included Vid Social, a timeline for comments on both live-streamed and hosted video and Giggle, which uses the SongKick app to generate playlists of music videos from bands that will be performing in your area soon. TVUS, which enables users to overlay any video (including Hangouts) over any Google TV screen, took home the grand prize.

So what will come of the projects developed this weekend? As the point wasn’t to complete an app, but to instead create enough of it for demo purposes, it’s still unsure. But there’s a track record for hackathons resulting in completed projects, such as Viki, an app curating Korean entertainment for Google TV.

Not only did the developers of that app conceive of it initially at the Mountain View headquarters hackathon, but because they had the opportunity to connect with the Google TV team, they were able to get featured on Google Play.

But that’s not the only reason people take part. And it’s not why Google employees volunteer their weekends to help. The biggest reason that people participate? Carff put it like this: “My first time, I wondered, who’s going to come in? Especially if they’ve been coding all weekend. But I was floored. The energy you get when people are excited about a new idea — it’s really invigorating.”

The Fold is distributed through PostTV, an Android app that debuted this week on Google TV and Android tablets, and Ravindran told me that the program was made very much with Google TV devices in mind. The show, which runs a total of 15 minutes every night, is split up into several segments, giving viewers the option to either watch the whole thing without any interruption, or skip over the stories that don’t interest them.

Ravindran said that his team followed a mobile-first kind of approach when developing both the show and the app, except that it put the connected TV experience first and then rethought how to make a show that works for it. “We are really working backwards from there,” he said.

A lot of other apps simply take all the video assets of a publisher and make them available on TVs without any additional curation, he lamented. His team on the other hand wanted to build a unique experience that people come back to, much like people used to come home to the evening news. “We are more focused on the daily habit than on one-time use,” Ravindran said, explaining that the app lets users know via Google TV’s notifications whenever a new episode is available.

So why launch on Google TV, as opposed to Roku or maybe even Samsung’s connected TV platform? Ravindran’s answer was refreshingly pragmatic: “We had to start somewhere.” His team had a lot of experience with Android, he added, and developing for Google TV had the benefit that they could also have it work on Andoid tablets without too many modifications. But there will be apps for other platforms as well going forward. Said Ravindran: “We aspire to be on all the platforms that make sense.”

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In fact, Sony will be the first hardware partner seeking to extend the Google TV brand beyond the U.S., with plans to launch it into Europe and Latin America.

Also read: LG set to roll out new Google TV models later this month

Retailing for $199, Sony’s Android-based NSZ GS7 internet player will debut in the U.S. July 22, with pre-orders available starting Monday at www.sony.com/sonygoogletv.

It will launch in the United Kingdom later in July, and later on in Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Netherlands, Brazil and Mexico.

The NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray player with Google TV will also be available this fall, debuting first in the U.S.

Sony follows LG as the second hardware partner to commit to a second-generation Google TV product. Logitech, which along with Sony was one of the two initial Google TV consumer electronics brands at launch, abandoned the platform after disappointing sales of its Revue player last year lost it around $100 million. Samsung and Vizio also showed off Google  TV products at CES in January.

Besides software improvements, the new Sony players will come with redesigned remote controls featuring backlit QWERTY keyboards.

Of course, Google doesn’t want to say anything about the box. A Google spokesperson only sent me the following statement: “We’re still exploring what product offerings will be available when we launch Google Fiber in Kansas City and we have nothing to announce at this time.”

The device goes by the name GFHD100, and details remain scarce: Key documents were redacted for confidentiality, so we won’t get to see the user’s manual or any schematics. However, the test report reveals that the box is an “IP set-top box” that comes with at least one USB port, an Ethernet port, AV out, IR, WiFi, an Ethernet-Coax bridge and HDMI in and out.

There are two things worth noting about this kind of set-up: The wireless module used in the device is produced by Samsung and goes by the name of SWB-B70. It doesn’t seem to be in use in any WiFi-certified devices yet, and it’s very likely that the chip will support gigabit WiFi speeds. Google had asked the FCC to authorize the use of gigabit WiFi for its fiber trials in February.

The other interesting nugget is the use of HDMI in and out ports. That smells very much like Google TV, which has been using this kind of daisy-chaining to combine legacy devices with Android apps. We already know that Google wants to offer TV services through its fiber network in Kansas City, and this revelation indicates that these services will be based on Google TV. Of course, Google’s TV services would likely be IP-based, but the HDMI input port would still help to connect legacy devices to a TV without interrupting the Google TV experience.

Google has been planing to use its Google TV platform for cable set-top boxes for some time, and its acquisition of Motorola Mobility last month seemingly opened the doors for such a move. However, many cable operators are resisting the idea to add an open platform to their boxes, and there have been reports indicating that Google might simply sell off Motorola’s set-top box business. Maybe the company needs to go through the troubles of building its own broadband infrastructure to make a Google TV-powered video service work?

Priced at $1,699 for a 47-inch model and $2,299 for another measuring 55 vertical inches, LG’s so-called “G2 Series”  televisions were unveiled in January at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and represent the first products from the second generation of Google TV devices.

The 3D-capable TV will come with a Marvell dual-core chip set operating at 1.2GHz will allow users to blend PC-like Google experiences–such as searching the Web and watching video on YouTube and Google Play–with watching good old-fashioned live TV. For its nifty new sets, LG has also developed a Wii-like gesture-based remote controller that comes with a QWERTY keyboard.

New Google TV devices are also expected from Samsung, Vizio and Sony later this year, with Sony expected to expand the platform into Europe in September.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google is hoping that Korea-headquartered LG, which is the second biggest manufacturer of TVs, can help kickstart its Google TV platform, which saw one of its two initial hardware partners, Logitech abandon the technology after disappointing early sales last year.

LG, meanwhile, is hoping that connected TVs based on the popular Android software architecture will boost TV sales.

In March, for example, research company IHS Screen Digest predicted the U.S. TV market would decline about 5 percent to 37.1 million new models sold in 2012.

Mario Queiroz, VP of product development for Google, appeared at last year’s paidContent Entertainment conference, where he spoke about Google TV and how it actually isn’t a cord-cutting product:

But despite plans to show off devices and sets next week in Las Vegas, don’t expect sales of new Google TV hardware from Sony or new partners Samsung and LG (SEO: 066570) anytime soon. The best estimate I can get from a knowledgeable so far is “first half of the year.” Vizio, announced last year at CES as a partner, will show some Google TV-powered sets for the first time. (More details in a Google TV blog post.)

While Sony is returning for more, Logitech, which made the poorly received Revue set-top, isn’t in the mix this time. Intel (NSDQ: INTC) is also out. Instead, Google TV will rely on chips from Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) and MediaTek for some new devices, while LG will use its own L9 chipset.

LG’s plans for Android-based Google TV, detailed on the company’s UK blog, include a U.S. launch this year, with UK scheduled for 2013. The sets will blend Google TV with LG’s own technology, including Cinema 3D, Smart TV and a qwerty-keyboard remote.

This time around, Google TV has to deliver on all fronts, especially to meet Chairman Eric Schmidt’s boast that it will ship on the majority of TV sets by mid-2012 and, more important, to actually be used by consumers. The software update was a significant improvement but it must be matched by hardware that is as easy to use and can be sold at price points that make sense beyond early adopters. Google TV 1.0 was more hype than action; Google TV 2.0 needs marketing that moves beyond hype and action that backs it up.

I had the chance to talk about the shortcomings of Google TV 1.0 and the new efforts with Mario Queiroz, VP of product development for Google, at our paidContent Entertainment conference in November. The video of that interview is embedded below:

(Disclosure: separately, Google TV was a sponsor of paidContent Entertainment. I also have used review units.)

“By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google (NSDQ: GOOG) TV embedded in it,” Schmidt said on stage at the Le Web conference.

The whole connected TV space will explode in 2012, as more new TVs ship with internet connectivity, bringing new content services to the living room. The on-screen gateway to that room is up for grabs.

So far, Google TV has shipped, somewhat experimentally and not wildly successfully, on just a Logitech box and a Sony (NYSE: SNE) TV.

Home electronics makers themselves look well placed. Samsung, LG (SEO: 066570), Panasonic and their ilk, including Sony, are already preferring to ship their own smart TV interfaces with their TVs. Samsung TV already has almost 1,000 apps for its Smart TV system.

Convincing any of the manufacturers to adopt Google TV over their own varieties looks way more difficult than it has been in the mobile sector. And that’s not even accounting for how, in many countries, TV is dominated by several big platforms and pay-TV vendors in a way mobile is not.

Schmidt, whose latest Android Ice Cream Sandwich variant is slick, is bullish because he thinks Google TV, which is essentially Android, will replicate the operating system’s mobile success. Told, on stage, that iPhone has a mobile lead, Schmidt retorted, rhetorically…

“What kind of lead? Android is ahead of the iPhone now – by unit volume, with ICS features, prices are lower, with more vendors, more pricepoints – do I need to continue the list? It’s free.”

Though Schmidt talked incessantly about competition being good, his defensive response to a suggestion that Google+ is a Facebook imitator ran contrary to this.

“One company comes to define a certain area – you’re better off trying to find something new that’s differentiated,” Schmidt said on that topic. “That’s what we’re trying to do with Google+, with many more products to come.”

Asked from the floor why the quality of Android’s app line-up pales against iOS’ despite Android’s shipment win and despite its apps catching up by volume, Schmidt said:

“Six months from now, you’ll say the opposite. Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume. The volume is favoured by the open approach Google is taking. Whether you like ICS or not, you will want to develop for that platform, perhaps even first.”

To summarise – in six months’ time, Android will be trumping iOS for apps and will be the dominant smart TV platform, Schmidt suggested.

The over-the-air update starts this week on Google-TV enabled Sony TV and Blu-Ray players, then moves to the Logitech Revue set-top box. But Google will miss the all-important holiday season when it comes to new hardware, instead waiting for 2012. The company says it has deals in place for new devices at “new pricepoints.”

The settop was overpriced, launching at $249, the remotes for both Sony and Logitech were clunky and ultimately, the experience was underwhelming. (Logitech cut the price to $99 over the summer after more were returned than sold.) It didn’t help that programmers like Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and Fox (NSDQ: NWS) and online video hub Hulu blocked access from the Google TV web browser, insisting that Google TV required distribution agreements.

On the plus side, Google says time spent on YouTube use doubled when users switched from computers to TV screens. The investment YouTube is making in original content is aimed squarely at increasing “TV” programming that comes straight from the web.

In line with that, this version of Google TV includes a custom YouTube experience, including tight integration with Google TV search and what Google says will be easier access to HD-quality video.

The “new” Google TV also has a TV & Movies app to search across multiple sites, including Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), cable, and satellite. That’s not exactly revolutionary but if it works well could take the place of some official programming guides.

The update also aims to simplify the experience and open the development to third-party solutions that will let people use Android smartphones and tablets to run connected devices. The Android Market for Google TV is a stripped-down version — no telephony, touchscreen or GPS apps — and the number of developers to start is very small, only 50.

On the less-simple side, Google TV also runs Google’s browser OS Chrome — well, some of it. The majority of Chrome apps are supposed to work; Chrome extensions won’t.

Google TV project lead Mario Queiroz and Vincent Dureau, director of engineering, offered the party line in ablog post: “The initial version of Google TV wasn’t perfect, but launching it gave us the opportunity to learn.”

We’ll hear more about that from Queiroz, the VP of product management, in an interview at paidContent Entertainment: Everything Everywhere this Thursday. (Disclosure: Google TV is also a sponsor of the conference.)

Google I/O has grown significantly since 2008, with the fourth incarnation set to kick off Tuesday. Nearly 5,500 attendees are expected to pony up for access to Google’s roster of engineers, who will present sessions on nearly everything Google, from search to Web application development to browsers to mobile applications. Here’s a breakdown of what to expect:

– Android: Google’s most successful product outside of search, Android, will likely draw the most attention during the week. The smartphone version of Android has been a rousing success, but tablet versions have yet to create any serious alternative to Apple’s iPad. It would be surprising if Google didn’t address the tablet question in some detail, either through new operating system versions or applications.

– Google TV: One version of Android that hasn’t really taken flight–Google TV–has been reported as worthy of an Google I/O slot. First introduced a year ago at this conference and launched last November, Google TV has faced opposition from the big network television companies and confusion among customers who encounter its remote controls. A preview of a next-generation version is expected, but enthusiasm for the concept in general is not strong leading into the show.

– Chrome OS: Netbooks bearing Google’s browser-centric operating system were supposed to have been launched last year, but delays forced the project into a mid-2011 launch schedule. Now that it’s May 2011, presumably Google is ready to shed more light on exactly what types of Chrome OS netbooks will launch, and how much they will cost. It will also be interesting to see if Google talks up Chrome OS tablet-style devices, given that interest in the netbook has waned considerably since Chrome OS was first announced in 2009.

– Web Standards: Google has used significant air time at the previous Google I/O conferences to urge adoption of HTML5 technologies as the pathway to a next-generation model of computing centered on the Web. This is still very much a work in progress. Expect Google to continue the evangelical call this week, with demonstrations of the types of sophisticated Web applications that are possible with HTML5 technologies.

– Wild Cards: Some form of a Google music locker is inevitable, but has the company locked down enough of the details with the music industry for it to surface this week? Will Google Docs finally get offline access? Which Android tablet will Google give away to attendees, the Xoom or the Galaxy Tab?

– Context: Google is a company that famously likes to celebrate its failures. That means Google I/O is probably its most celebratory week of each year, considering it has produced such notable failures as Google Wave and Google Friend Connect. As pointed out over the course of the weekend, Google doesn’t necessarily save some of its most winning ideas for Google I/O: Google Instant was announced at its own event last September, for example.

However, this is the first Google I/O with Larry Page back at the helm of the company, and therefore the first chance for him to really put his stamp on the show. Google has been furiously reorganizing its executive ranks in the weeks since Page has taken over, and this Google I/O may give hints as to the new pecking order at Google with respect to the types of projects demonstrated at the show, and the people chosen to pitch those projects to the world.

It’s a week in which all eyes will be on the company that dominates Web search, fumbles with social skills, and provides a defensible alternative to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in the mobile market. We’ll be at Google I/O both days, and will bring you highlights and analysis of Google’s week in the spotlight.