Sony Google TV Set-top Box Headed to UK, US, and Canada

News
By Jane McEntegart
published

Sony and Google today announced plans to bring Google TV to the UK with the unveiling of Sony's NSZ-GS7 Internet Player with Google TV set-top box. The NSZ-GS7 will first be available in the United Kingdom, launching in July and priced at £200. However, the player won't be exclusive to Britain, as Sony also has plans to bring the player to North America, Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, and Mexico.

Already up for pre-order, the set-top box will launch in the United States next month and will be priced at $200. The player will allow you to search the web from your TV, stream content from the internet direct to your television, as well as download applications from the Google Play Store. Google said today that it plans to talk more about Google TV at Google I/O this week.

As for Sony, it plans to launch an additional device, the NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray Disc player with Google TV, in October. This will initially only be available in the United States, but additional launches are planned for Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Netherlands.

We'll be checking out Sony's Internet Player with Google TV later this week so stay tuned for hands on!

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Jane McEntegart
8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • inthere
    Why is the same device always priced more in the UK and Europe?
    Reply
  • velocityg4
    These internet browsing boxes for TV's keep failing. If people were actually interested they'd be hooking up their computers by now. It is just too inconvenient to browse the internet on the TV. Plus you lose the main function of the TV while doing so.

    Even media boxes have had limited success most notably the Apple TV. Mainly among people very interested in owning every tech gadget. For the average person these devices are just too cumbersome and pointless.

    It takes too much effort to scroll through 1000's of movies and tv programs on set top boxes. You get all sorts of playback problems if too many people are using the servers or your connection is running slow.

    While with regular TV viewing you just go through a short guide of your favorite channels and find something you want to watch. The vast majority of the time the show plays fine and image quality doesn't vary. You don't always find something interesting. Really though you see a wider variety than you would online.

    I know when watching TV I see a much wider variety of shows. While using online sources I watch a much narrower band of content. This is because it is a pain to navigate through the guides of these services. The amount of content is overwhelming (99.9% being absolute crap). Most of the stuff I do want to watch is not available. When I do actually find something it will lose the connection half way through the show, the screen video window resizes due to a commercial and/or the video quality may suddenly go from HD to craptastic.
    Reply
  • drwho1
    My Plasma has been hooked up to my PC for many years now, I use it to watch videos directly from my PC or from the internet. This setup boxes are a failure in my opinion, a simple cable from your video card to one of your TV inputs is all you need.
    Reply
  • dotaloc
    drwho1My Plasma has been hooked up to my PC for many years now, I use it to watch videos directly from my PC or from the internet. This setup boxes are a failure in my opinion, a simple cable from your video card to one of your TV inputs is all you need.
    half-way agreed. if you have a family, though, and need to do anything interactive (you can set a video to play on tv and keep working on other screen) on both the TV and the computer simultaneously, i could see the convenience of this. personally, i'll probably go Raspberry Pi, but this is likely more user friendly at 8x the cost...so that is what most people will prefer.
    Reply
  • jhansonxi
    inthereWhy is the same device always priced more in the UK and Europe?Exchange rates? Licensing fees? Middlemen?
    Reply
  • So, basically it's a more expensive Boxee box.
    Reply
  • In the E.U we are charged tax on goods called VAT. I believe in most states in the U.S there is no sales tax at all.

    So everything in Ireland adds 23% on to Almost everything we buy and I think 21% in the U.K ?
    Reply
  • lisalloyd
    Sony sent me one of these to trial, and so far I've been very impressed. One of my favourite features is picture in picture. I have my cable TV connected through HDMI, which means I can watch cable and surf the web at the same time. I also love the Media Remote app which I added to my Android phone, which allows me to use it as a remote plus other cool features. It has a function called Catch and Throw, which allows me to bring up a website on my phone and press a button to throw it to the TV, or pull a site from the TV down to my phone. The standard remote is also awesome, with so many different ways to use it. It has the QWERTY keyboard on one side, and a standard remote and mousepad on the other. I've been impressed by how easy the Internet Player was, ready to go straight out of the box. Check out my short video review here: http://youtu.be/bUbw9BxNbE8
    Reply