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Android TV Box Aims To Take Over Your Living Room

By David Cornell
Published on: 06:46 PST, Jun 25, 2014

The Android TV box is getting ready to become your source for living room entertainment. It seems Google is trying to take over our lives one gadget at a time, and this time it’s not something you’ll wear.

Android TV (stylized as AndroidTV) is a micro-console which will likely stream network programming and let you play games without the need for another console, much like Amazon’s Fire TV. Apparently the Ouya was enough of a failure that Google decided to try a different approach. Several naysayers claimed that Ouya was like taking games from your smartphone or tablet and putting them on your HDTV, which might have sounded good enough to get KickStarter funding, but in reality its performance and quality just paled in comparison to the consoles we already had.

Google Glass was another attempt to get their technology out there, but the limited availability and cost kept it from being more than a trend among the wealthy. Combine this with the obvious problem of trying to use it with actual glasses and it just wasn’t practical.

It’s too early to tell if the Google Wear will do any better. A wristband which does all of the basic things that an Android phone can do might seem a bit much for the casual consumer.

The Android TV box is being made by Razer, a veteran in the industry whose previous achievements include the Razer Blade and Junglecat controller. The Razer Blade is considered one of the best Windows laptops ever made, an incredibly portable gaming powerhouse. The Junglecat is an iOS slide-out gaming controller that makes it easier for iPhone users to dominate the game.

Details on how the AndroidTV box will work are mostly unknown, but it will offer control through your Android device using an app. We are imagining a much more powerful Android OS giving users an experience similar to the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 home screen menus, using a slide-out controller for games that would be awkward using just a touch screen by itself.

Could the AndroidTV box suffer the same fate as the Ouya?

There haven’t been any details announced about the AndroidTV availability, price, specs, or release date, but you can be assured that Google will reveal that information shortly. Are you excited about the upcoming Android TV box, or are you as skeptical as we are?

[image via xinyutech]

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