Google’s presence at the CES loomed quite big this year as the annual tech expo and conference looked quite rebounded from the lean years that it experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic peak period.
With some great improvements in Android, Google decided the 2024 show would be heavily focused on Google TV, the Android-driven streaming service that offers thousands of apps to your home theater.
As Revealed during the CES, there is a wide range of improvements that would be heading to your Home’s biggest screen, and this represents some serious upgrades to ease of use and functionality.
All the New Features Your Google TV Will Receive
It appears that Google is focused on solving the most common points of friction that users encounter in common use-case scenarios, starting from connecting your Bluetooth devices to casting from popular mobile phone apps. Additionally, partnerships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and further improved smart home integration should make the Google TV experience a lot more seamless than before. Below are all the new features that will be hitting Google TV:
Fast Pair for Bluetooth Devices
A lot of Google TV devices, which includes Google’s very own Chromecast with Google TV, have supported Bluetooth for a long time, and this has helped people who want to enjoy watching their favorite movies on the big screen without having to disturb anyone around them. But, until this moment, the process has been quite stressful.
Pairing a set of headphones would mean that you would have to Open “Chromecast settings” and would have to go through tons of submenus before you could watch your favorite show. Today, Google Decided to make the process easier by announcing that it would be adding Fast pair to the Chromecast with Google TV, with more devices being able to pair with time.
TikTok Support
Another announcement at CES included support for TikTok, which you can now broadcast to any Chromecast-enabled device, which includes Google TV devices. Previously, there was this TikTok app that could be installed on the Google TV directly from the Play Store, but at the moment, you can simply just cast your “For You” feed to your screen directly.
It’s difficult to determine the number of people clamoring for the ability to watch vertical videos that were designed on a smartphone right on their horizontally oriented TVs, but if this has been one of your cravings, then Google has your back.
More compatibility between them is a good push. Casting the video, you are watching on your TikTok is a lot better than having a group of people huddle around you to see what you are watching. And if there is a trend, probably a dance trend that you would like to learn, then you should enjoy making use of your bigger screen when practicing.
Chromecast on LG TVs
Another great addition to Google TV’s features that was announced at CES is the Google and LG partnership. The electronics manufacturer has decided that they would be releasing more screens coming with a built-in Chromecast.
This extends to LG’s range of hospitality-focused TVs – the ones you are most likely to see in hotel rooms, meaning travelers would get the luxury of easily casting content from their phones, tablets, or laptops without fiddling with the TV’s onboard apps. Plus, the LG’s expected consumer TVs for 2024 would also come with these capabilities.
Support for Matter Networks
For the past year, the smart home has always been one of the biggest tech battlegrounds. Different standards were battling for dominance, leading to a fractured marketplace that usually made the smart living room more frustrating than actually being futuristic.
As of 2022, the open-source matter standard was launched by the Connectivity Standards Alliance. Intending to unite smart home tech right under a single banner, its goal was to end the era of having to separate apps for your coffee maker and light bulbs. The biggest players in the smart tech industry came around to make matter viable, and Google happens to be among its top champions. For this reason, it was no surprise that at CES 2024, Google promised to offer an increase in matter functionality for the Google TV.
Verdict
As stated by Google, “select Google TV and other Android TV OS devices,” alongside LG TVs, would now be able to act as a smart home hub for the matter. This means that these devices would work as a relay point for matter-connected smart homes, making it a lot easier to coordinate lights, speakers, thermostats, laundry machines, kitchen appliances, and more.
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