Google's rival to the Apple TV - the Google Nexus Player - has been made available for pre-order in the UK. The streaming media player will be released later this week, on 26 March, but can be pre-ordered now from Amazon and other sites. The device is priced at £80 - which is £20 more expensive than the recently reduced Apple TV - but it offers a greater range of features than Apple's device.
The Google Nexus Player is primarily a media streamer. It runs on the Android TV operating system, which offers a variety of apps, including YouTube, Netflix, Vevo and others. It can also be used in a similar vein to Google's Chromecast dongle, streaming content from apps on other devices, such as Android smartphones and tablets, Windows PCs and Macs, and Google Chromebooks.
It pulls ahead of the Apple TV with a couple of extra features. First, the remote control offers voice recognition, allowing you to search for films etc by simply saying their name, rather than having to laboriously enter letters via a remote control and on-screen keyboard, like you do on the Apple TV.
The Google Nexus Player is also a mini games console. Google Play games can be installed on the device, and it comes with an optional Xbox-style controller (not currently priced in the UK). You can also control games using your Android smartphone or tablet as a touch-based controller. The device ships with a PowerVR Series 6 Graphics chip, alongside a 1.8GHz quad-core Intel Atom processor and 1GB of RAM, which should give it enough grunt to cope with most 3D games.
Indeed, in terms of features, the Google Nexus Player is closer to Amazon's Fire TV - also now sold for £80 - than the Apple TV. Amazon's device also has voice recognition and an optional games controller, alongside the standard streaming features.
The Nexus Player arrives at £80, just as Apple knocked £20 off the price of its Apple TV, which hasn't been updated (in terms of hardware, at least) for two-and-a-half years. Rumours are once again swirling that Apple will upgrade the Apple TV unit this summer, complete with Siri voice recognition and App Store support. However, there have been whispers about Apple TV updates ahead of almost every Apple press conference for the past couple of years, so you'll forgive us for taking these latest reports with an absolute fistful of salt.