4K Google TV is here

AITV: PLUG DIGITAL BOX INTO HDMI PORT TO TRANSFORM STANDARD DEVICE

- Arthur Goldstuck

The Acer 4K UHD Digital Media box, branded as the Acer AiTV, is the company's first streaming product and the first time South Africa has led a global launch for the brand.

Plug it into any HDMI port and a standard television becomes a full 4K Google TV system with an app catalogue equivalent to the world's most advanced smart TVs.

Glenn Du Toit, country manager for Acer Africa, introduced the device at a Johannesburg launch by reminding the audience that Acer's link with Google stretches back to the first Chromebooks:

“We were the first vendor to bring Google Chromebooks into the market back in 2012, particularly for education. Since then, we've learned how Google works and how its ecosystems connect, which led us to Google TV.”

He made it clear that the move into streaming hardware is a deliberate expansion rather than a side project: “Android TV and Google TV are not the same. Android is smart streaming, while Google TV is intelligent viewership.”

In use, Android TV treats each app as an island, while Google TV groups by genre, preference and profile. “If you search for the latest James Bond movie, Google TV shows every app that has it; you ask once, it does the rest,” said Du Toit.

“The days of search are literally gone. We're shifting from search to ask.”

The AiTV runs Android 14 with the Google TV interface on an Amlogic S905X5 quad-core Cortex-A55 CPU and Mali-G31 MP2 GPU.