Google today unveiled a bevy of new products — check out our pals at Android Central for more on that — but there are two we're paying particular interest to.
The new Chromecast (which had leaked sixteen different ways before today, including being sold ahead of time at various retailers) is here, and available today for $49. Like its predecessor it's an HDMI dongle that hides behind your TV. (Which makes it a little weird that it comes in a handful of snazzy Google-riffic colors, but whatever.)
The new Chromecast handles 4K resolution and Dolby Vision for HDR (as well as HDR10 and HDR10+), and all that at up to 60 frames per second. It supports Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Atmos passthrough. It supports dual-band 802.11ac Wifi, and Bluetooth. And it's powered by a USB-C charger.
Unlike previous Chromecasts, the 2020 model is rocking a full operating system on board. And it's no longer Android TV — it's now Google TV.
Actually, it was Google TV before, and now it's Google TV again.
It's not uncommon for Google to rebrand things, and this actually is the second time we've seen Google TV. The first came a decade ago when Google and Android first played in the home entertainment space.
Here's how Google puts things in 2020:
The new Google TV experience brings together movies, shows, live TV and more from across your apps and subscriptions and organizes them just for you. To build this, we studied the different ways people discover media—from searching for a specific title to browsing by genre—and created an experience that helps you find what to watch. We also made improvements to Google’s Knowledge Graph, which is part of how we better understand and organize your media into topics and genres, from movies about space travel to reality shows about cooking. You’ll also see titles that are trending on Google Search, so you can always find something timely and relevant.
In other words, Google TV is faster and easier and should serve you well until the next rebranding.
Google TV is exclusive on the new Chromecast for now. But it'll be coming to televisions from Sony and other partners starting in 2021.
