Vincent Dureau, Google’s head of TV technology, gave us another glimpse into the mind of Google and what it might be planning for its television presence in his opening keynote at iTV Con, a trade show conference dedicated to Internet TV.

Television, he said, is experiencing an identity crisis (Register report). As we all know, there has been an explosion of content, with more and more cable and satellite TV channels; with the Internet, IPTV, and YouTube; and with TiVo and DVRs. Viewers have more freedom to pick what they want to watch, when, and to add to the confusion, they can skip the advertising.

Dureau, like many other industry observers, notes that this creates new problems for content producers and for advertisers, “as they struggle to reach an audience that has so many options.” The same thing, he argued, applied to the World Wide Web, which Google helped tame with search and AdSense, among other innovations. With a little Internet know-how, the TV industry can enjoy a brighter future.

Google style.

According to a survey carried out by iSuppli, nearly two-thirds of U.S. consumers want their televisions to link to the Internet. This, it’s suggested, could path the way for an explosion in sales of network-enabled consumer electronics devices in the next few years.

Home networking is migrating beyond the PC, says the report, and instead devices that sit on a user’s home network now include: DVD recorders, cable modems, Digital Televisions, multi-room Digital Video Recorders, digital media extenders, set-top boxes and video game consoles.

CinemaNow, which offers paid movie and TV show downloads (rental and to-own), has updated its Media Manager software, so that content from its store can be streamed from a PC to the XBox 360. This represents the latest move by CinemaNow to get its service to work across multiple devices and platforms, from portable media players, media extenders, set-top-boxes, and Internet-connected televisions such as HP’s upcoming line of MediaSmart LCD TVs.

This is the second article in a two part series exploring Microsoft’s Internet TV strategy.

In part one, we looked at the history of Microsoft’s Internet TV initiatives. We now turn our attention to examining what you can do with the company’s products and services today, and we’ll finish with some thoughts on what to expect in the future.

Today, Microsoft’s three main television products are Windows Media Center, Xbox 360, and Mediaroom (formerly Microsoft TV IPTV Edition). Let’s look at each in turn.

VeohTV (see our review) is an Internet TV application which pulls in videos from thousands of sources — which currently includes NBC, CBS, FOX, YouTube, MySpace, and Veoh’s own video-sharing site — with content browsable via a simple channel guide. The idea is to give users access to a wide range of online video content, all within an easy to use, full-screen cable TV-like interface. And while the software has yet to be released to the public, it’s already coming under scrutiny from the companies whose content VeohTV is aggregating. That’s because Veoh is operating without formal licensing agreements.