Googles Half-Finished Attempt to Take Over the Living Room

Googles Nexus Player should appeal to those who want smarter TVs. But it will need to do much more to be the hub of all home entertainment.

Googles Nexus Player lets you stream videos and music to your TV from the Web, and play games, too.

Last year, Google invited itself into the living room with the Chromecast, a $35 dongle that plugs into the back of any TV with an HDMI port and lets you play online videos and other content on your television from another device.

Now, Google hopes to get even comfier on the couch with the Nexus Player, a $99 black disc with a Bluetooth remote control that turns any TV with an HDMI port into an Internet-connected TV that can stream movies, play music and video games, and run select Android apps.

The simple, user-friendly design of the Nexus Players hardware and software, along with great voice search, make it a good deal for those who dont already have a connected TV. Assuming a larger number of apps become available in the near future, it may even eventually be worth it for people like myself who already have a connected TV but hate the interface.

The Nexus Player software is thoughtfully laid out, dominated by a row of popular movies and TV shows along with a handful of YouTube videos it thought I would like (based on my Google account history).

In addition to the puck-like Nexus Player, the devices box contained a power adapter and a slender, cheap-feeling, black remote controlyoull need to use your own HDMI cord, unfortunately. The remote has a handful of buttons, including a circular five-way directional button surrounding an enter button, another button for Googles voice search, and a button to get back to the main Nexus Player screen.

The simplicity makes it a cinch to figure out how to choose apps, videos, and the like, and I had no problem using the remote to zip from YouTube clips to Pandora to video games.

It has a few big problems, though. It lacks volume control, so youll have to keep a regular TV remote nearby. And I was dismayed to realize that some things still require the tedious one-letter-at-a-time username/password process common on so many systems that dont have a touch screen. This really slowed me down while setting up apps that require user accounts, like Netflix and Pandora.

The voice search button is the star of the remote. You can say obvious things like Zoolander to bring up the movie of that name, or get a little more complicated by asking for movies with a specific actor, from a certain genre, or nominated for an Oscar in, say, 2010. For the most part, voice search understood what I was saying, and it did yield some good results. It also seems to understand foreign movie titles, so long as you say them with an American accent; I figured this out while asking for Ma Vie en Rose.

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Googles Half-Finished Attempt to Take Over the Living Room