New ‘Google TV Streamer’ Media Player Leaks

The successor to Google’s Chromecast with Google TV has leaked, and it won’t be using the same HDMI dongle design as before. 9to5Google published marketing pictures of the new device, which Google has named the “Google TV streamer,” and they show a white pill-shaped device designed to sit under a television.

It’s not clear yet if the surface of the device will serve any function. 9to5Google suggered that Google moving away from the dongle design may be justified if the base of the “Google TV streamer” offers a “Tap to Cast” feature similar to the one Google announced for its Pixel tablet and select Pixel phones earlier this year. However, this is just speculation as of this writing.

The leaked pictures for the Google TV streamer also show a slightly bigger remote with a different button layout. The volume buttons have been moved from the right side of the remote to the front, and the Home button is now on the first row where it switched places with the new microphone button, now on the second row without any Google Assistant branding. Otherwise, the new remote still has buttons for YouTube, Netflix, Power, plus a shortcut “Star” button.

The first Google Chromecast with Google TV was released back in September 2020, and it’s overdue for an update. An “HD” version wa salso released in 2022 with just 1.5GB of memory compared to 2GB on the original 4K version. Storage is probably more of an issue as both versions of the Chromecast with Google TV are limited to 8GB of internal storage.

The Chromecast with Google TV was the first Android TV device to offer the new “Google TV” interface that encourages content discovery accross different services and apps. Google introduced ads on this new Google TV interface last year, though it’s still not as bad as the ad-filled experience on Amazon Fire TV devices.

In Google TV-related news, Google announced yesterday (via 9to5Google) that it will soon no longer be possible to purchase TV shows from Google TV on Google TV devices, Android TV devices, as well as the Google TV mobile app. While previously purchased content will remain available, users will need to go to YouTube to purchase TV shows from Google over the next few weeks. However, any TV shows purchased on YouTube after today will only be accessible through YouTube.