Based on the new Android TV OS, it’s out to fill the crowded niche of small streaming boxes for accessing Netflix, on-demand video, music and games on your TV.Īs with so many early Google products, though, it feels incomplete. While it may seem like the world doesn’t need another set-top box platform, Google has proven that there’s a better way to build one, drawing its core strengths in algorithmic suggestions, voice search, and sharp UI design.Google has had several stabs at TV over the years and the Nexus Player (£79 / $95 USD) is its latest. With so many people using Android phones and tablets, there’s a huge opportunity to pitch Android TV gaming as “buy once, play everywhere,” but it’s just another area of inconsistency right now.Īndroid TV clearly has some challenges ahead, but I’m still rooting for it. Some games in the catalog are TV-specific, and even games with multi-device support don’t always carry your progress over. If you do decide to splurge on a few games, don’t expect them all of them to be available on your Android phone or tablet. For all that Ouya did wrong, its emphasis on having some free-to-try element in every game was a revelation, and needs to be copied. While I don’t think every game should be fully free-to-play, right now there’s little incentive to even see what Android TV’s gaming component is all about. #Nexus playr trialThe bigger problem is that Google Play Games has no trial mechanism for paid games. The optional $40 controller mimics the look and feel of console gamepads. But you won’t find any of those games on Android TV currently. Over the last couple of years, the Google Play Store has built up a sizable list of games that work with physical controllers, including console ports like Grant Theft Auto: San Andreas, Sonic the Hedgehog 4, and The Cave. We can only hope that non-participants will see users gravitating more toward recommended content, and will feel the pressure not to lose their audience.Īs you might expect, the gaming library isn’t particularly large at launch, though it’s unclear why. (Netflix recently added a bunch of Food Network collections, too!) Whether it’s due to developer apathy or unwillingness to let Google control too much of the experience, the inconsistency hurts Android TV as a whole. The problem is that several apps-including Netflix-aren’t feeding into the system at all. But third-party apps can feed into this system as well, and they’ll show their own suggestions as you use them more often.Īndroid TV’s recommendations section gets better with time, but could use more app support. The recommendations strip starts off looking like a generic way to sell you stuff, skewed heavily in favor of new movies and TV shows from the Google Play Store with a few YouTube videos mixed in. That alone makes Android TV much more successful than the now-deceased Google TV.Ĭompared to the static apps and games lists, recommendations are Android TV’s most intriguing feature. The interface runs smoothly, and is so straightforward that it’s nearly impossible to get lost. Recommendations are on top, a list of apps is in the middle, and games are on the bottom. There are no sidebars or sub-sections to drill through, and the entire interface is limited to three sections on the main screen. A couple more buttons for fast forward and rewind would have been helpful as well.Īs with most TV boxes, what really matters is the software, and Google has tried to distinguish itself by keeping Android TV as simple as possible. Like Amazon’s Fire TV, it also includes a microphone and dedicated voice command button-more on that later-but there’s no clever headphone jack like you get with Roku’s remote. Up front, there’s a circular directional pad with a select button in the middle, and buttons for back, home, and play/pause underneath. The included remote is small and basic, built from cheap plastic and powered by two AAA batteries. The Nexus Player keeps it simple when it comes to inputs and outputs.
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