The report comes from Bloomberg who sources two people familiar with the matter. The timing is certainly right. Sony hasn’t been in the top TV spot for years, constantly losing marketshare to others like Samsung, LG, and even Vizio. Something needs to be done and so Sony is said to be testing a whole line of home entertainment devices that will bring the wonders of the Internet to TVs and Blu-ray players through Android. Logitech is even said to be in on the venture and will contribute a wireless keyboard that will work as a remote.

But as sweet as an Android TV sounds, it might not be the right solution — at least not for the North American market. This could either be a huge win or a fail whale.

Most consumers in the states and Canada receive their TV content through a service provider like Comcast, DirecTV or Bell. These companies require some-sort of set-top box to receive the signal, turning the HDTV into a monitor of sorts. The consumer rarely interacts directly with the TV as the guide, picture-in-picture, and everything else is done through the cable box. Even the remote used more times than not is the one for the cable box, not the TV’s.

It makes you wonder how the Android-powered system would work. Hopefully it’s some sort of layer that can be served up over top of the cable or satellite content and not a totally separate function requiring switching inputs or changing modes. Sure, it could would be a fancy selling point, but not something that consumers would use after the novelty period wears off.

Internet widgets made their way onto HDTVs the last few years and while they seem useful, they have yet to gain traction in helping to sell TVs. These widgets make more sense than a full internet-capable operating system, as they can be popped over other content and serve up user-picked content such as sport scores, weather, stock info, and pictures via Flickr.

It’s a different story in Sony’s home of Japan. A lot of TV content there is served up over the air or sent directly to the TV, bypassing set-top boxes. Many Japanese-market TVs have guides built-in and consumers interact only with the TV. Perhaps Sony is primarily targeting the more technologically adventuresome Asian market.

Of course all this is hearsay right now although this isn’t the first we’ve heard of an Android TV. Others of been talking about it for a while but so far nothing has made it to market. Google I/O is May 19-20 so we’ll find out Sony’s Android plan in less than 30 days. If there’s a plan at all that is.

A GreenMaraschino Bing netbook. Really? Are all the Cherrypal models (assuming they stay in business) going to carry names stemming from various cherries?

Moving on. The Bing is powered by an N720 Intel Atom proc. Cherrypal claims that the Bing is the “fastest, most affordable and least power consuming Intel Atom N270 based netbook on the market.” The Bing comes in a Windows XP or Linux based Green Maraschino. Other specs after the jump, but you already know what an Intel Atom netbook can do, right?

1.6GHz operation, 1 GB DDRII memory, 160 GB HDD
3 USB 2.0; 1 earphone
SD/MMC/MS card socket
Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g) built-in
Built-in microphone and dual speakers
10.2” TFT display with 1024 x 600 resolution, wide-screen
1.3M Pixel web camera, weight 3 lbs, 5 hours battery

Product Page

Interesting bit of speculation surrounding the Mac Mini. Tom’s Hardware, one of the oldest, bestest hardware-focused sites out there, says that the upcoming Mac Mini speed bump will feature Nvidia’s new Ion platform. Among other things, that can lead to an even smaller Mac Mini.

The Ion is basically two Intel Atom 330 processors slapped together along with an Nvidia GPU, the same kind used in the new MacBook. That is, the Nvidia 9400M. The processors run at 1.6GHz. A single Atom at that speed isn’t so great, but Tom’s Hardware says that they work much better as part of the Ion.

That horrendously butchered paragraph aside, the Ion, if it indeed makes it into the next gen Mac Mini, would enable Apple to shrink the size of the Mac Mini while keeping the price right around the $500 mark. March is the date currently being bandied about.

WindowsForDevices via jkOnTheRun