After a day of big launches, with the company finally outing the Nexus 6, Nexus 9 and Android Lollipop, Google has also announced the Nexus Player, the first box to run its Android TV platform. Similar in style and function to the Apple TV, the Asus-manufactured Nexus Player is a circular set-top box that connects to your TV so that you can stream videos, photos and music from online.
With its simple and elegant remote control, the box can be controlled entirely without a smartphone, unlike the cheap and simple Chromecast. Like a lot of Google devices, the Nexus Player is voice controllable, too, via the microphone built into the remote. To ensure that there's enough bandwidth and quality for voice control, the remote is Bluetooth enabled.
As you'd expect, you can watch any content that you've bought through the Google Play store. Content syncs across all of your Android devices, too, so you can start watching on one device and finish watching on the Nexus Player, or vice versa. On top of that Nexus Player has built-in apps to let you watch other content. We're not yet sure which services will make it to the UK, as the initial announcement is for the US only. However, we'd expect Netflix and YouTube to make their way over. It'll be interesting to see if some of the Chromecast apps, such as Sky Now TV, BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport, get native Android TV apps.
You can also Cast other content to the box from any Chromecast enabled app on Mac, Windows, Android or iOS - check out our list of the best Chromecast apps for more information. This also means that you'll be able to stream content from a local media server using Plex.
As well as simply consuming content, you'll also be able to install Google Play Games and play them via the Xbox One-style remote control. It'll be interesting to see what the graphics capability of the box is like, with a PowerVR Series 6 Graphics chip inside.
Otherwise, the box is fully up-to-date with the latest hardware, with a 1.8GHz quad-core Intel Atom CPU, 1GB RAM, 8GB of storage, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1. Pre-orders start on 17th October, but we don't know if it will be available in the UK on this date or how much it will cost at the moment. We'll bring you more information as we have it.
