Reported by IDG Magazines this week, a company called Honeywld Technology is developing a Google TV set-top box that will allow users to stream movies and television shows from an Android tablet or smartphone. Basically identical to Apple’s Airplay technology, video and pictures can be sent from a mobile Android device and appear on the television screen through the Google TV hardware. Android smartphone and tablet owners will have to install a third-party application in order to get it to work though. The company hasn’t announced support for syncing music through the Google TV hardware, but it’s likely that form of media will be supported as well.
This particular Google TV set-top box will run Android 4.0 OS (Ice Cream Sandwich) and uses a Marvell dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor along with 1GB of RAM. The device comes with microSD and HDMI inputs as well as 4GB of internal flash memory. In addition, users can connect the box to a router through an Ethernet jack or simply use Wi-Fi on their home network.
Beyond streaming video from an Android device, the set-top box also provides access to Google services such as YouTube and Picasa in addition to custom applications like a Web browser and a media player. Representatives at Honeywld Technology are still searching for a distributor within North America, but the company expects to price the set-top box between $95 to $120.
While this set-top box could be considered part of the next wave of Google TV devices, Google is still reeling from the lack of popularity of the discontinued Logitech Revue as well as the expensive, $300 Sony NSZ-GT1 Blu-ray player with Google TV functionality. Google will likely need to partner with a new consumer electronics manufacturer within North America in order to push out an inexpensive set-top box utilizing the new ARM processors instead of Intel chips.
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