You will locate Google Assistant on various devices these times, from smart speakers to soundbars to routers. Thus, you will locate Google’s Android TV OS preinstalled on any device, from projectors to set-top cartons to TVs. In the future, you may be ready to pick up a set-top carton that operates Android TV and doubles as a Google Assistant intelligent speaker.
Establishing both Google Assistant and Android TV into an individual product isn’t unique. Almost all Android TV devices have Google Assistant built-in, but they generally want to activate the Assistant through a dedicated key on the remote. They’re not entirely voice-controlled like the myriad of Google Assistant intelligent speakers ready on the market today.
One product gives you the full Android TV and Google Assistant intelligent speaker experience, though. The JBL Link Bar is a soundbar with far-field microphones for voice-activated Google Assistant help, and it also has an HDMI port to attach to your TV so it can act as an Android TV set-top carton. Next, an over-year-long pause, the JBL Link Bar published scathing surveys that analyzed it for failing to join all three device models intended to restore cohesively.
Although the JBL Link Bar failed, it appears we’re on the way to preparing innovative devices that join a Google Assistant intelligent speaker with an Android TV carton. As found by @AndroidTV_Rumor on Twitter, Shenzhen SEI Robotics has declared the first Google Assistant smart speaker with Android TV built-in.
SEI Robotics is a Shenzhen-based corporation that generates white label Android TV goods for operators and other organizations. For example, they produced the ADT-2 for Google as a growing program for Android TV. Their most modern goods are for a Vietnamese telecom provider called FPT Telecom. It’s called the Financing and Promoting Technology PlayBox, and it’s market as “the world’s first hands-free Android TV carton.”
The Financing and Promoting Technology (FPT) Play Box is a bit longer than your usual Google Assistant intelligent speaker, but it has a typical puck-like design. Beneath the hood, it’s energy by Amlogic’s S905X3 SoC, which prominently doesn’t help AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) video decoding — a future necessity for approved Android TV goods. It’s joined with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. Further importantly, it has two far-field microphones to choose up “Okay Google” or “Hey Google” rules from a distance.
Except you live in Vietnam and are a Financing and Promoting Technology (FPT) Telecom consumer, you will probably never get your hands on the Financing and Promoting Technology PlayBox. What’s exciting about this product to us is the fact that it even survives.
Google rigorously controls what products are permitted to ship with Android TV, which is why you notice many no-name set-top boxes vessel with a custom quality of Android instead of the usual Android TV interface. Now that Google is approving intelligent speakers with Android TV and estimates ODMs are mass-producing such goods for operators, it’s only a focus of time before this sequence becomes extra widespread.
We’ve seen intelligent speakers increase as set-top boxes in history, like the Swisscom Box, SFR Box 8, and Freebox Delta, but no goods since the JBL Link Bar has partnered with Android TV and voice-activated Google Assistant. Probably, you won’t have to resolve one or the other soon.