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There are bound to be a plethora of options for adding Android TV to your current home entertainment setup through the advent of set-top boxes. If you haven’t already decided to get in bed with the Nexus Player, Razer’s Forge TV is something you’ll want to consider.
Razer, a manufacturer of fine gaming products, has created a “micro-console” that’ll glow with an intriguing green as it sits below your TV. For as small as it is, this thing is packing a lot of power with a Snapdragon 805 chipset and 2GB of RAM. That configuration of silicon translates to a very smooth user interface experience with which you’ll navigate all your apps and games, as well as ample power to run the apps and games themselves.
Other specs include WiFi AC, Bluetooth 4.1, an ethernet port and 16GB of internal storage. The HDMI port on the back supports up to 1080p sets, and a USB port exists for some purpose (hopefully the ability to expand storage using a flash drive).
The gamepad, being named Serval, isn’t the most revolutionary thing we’ve ever seen, but for an extra $50 on top of the Razer Forge’s $99 price tag you’ll be able to play games in a natural, comfortable way. The ability to attach up to 4 controllers at a time will make it quite the nice inexpensive gaming console for a family that doesn’t want to spend money on an Xbox One or PS4.
Also playable with that gamepad? PC games that can be streamed from your PC to the Razer Forge. We’re told it can stream any PC game built on DirectX 9 or higher (pretty much any modern-day PC game), though we’ll have to see if it’s as smooth as, say, NVIDIA’s Grid or Steam’s PC game streaming. Nevertheless, this little box looks very cool, does a lot and costs very little, and we can’t wait for its arrival.
Sure it could be the coolest thing in your living room but will they ever get it to market? (cough cough…Nabu)
I only see a use in an Android box to play classic emulator games (NES/SNES/Genesis/N64/PSX/Scumm/MAME) every once in a while as I have a PS4. The OUYA (Tegra 3) is actually plenty powerful for all of that and has great compatibility.
Disappointingly it has a bit of input lag for me. I wonder what my next attempt at this venture will be, this or maybe the nexus player?
Î was thinking the same thing
It would probably also work pretty well as a HTPC for playing back media files.
If this is finally the first decent Android TV/FireTV $99 box that manages to output surround sound on almost all codecs on Plex, it would be an amazing little HTPC.
For some reason, though, I doubt it will.
A raspberry pi can emulate those games as well and costs half as much as these.
Edit: Not trying to sound like a jerk, merely pointing out that a cheaper option for emulators does exist. I paired mine with a $10 USB NES controller and it works very well.
Nice i’ve wanted a Pi to mess around with but haven’t grabbed one yet. I thought it was a bit underpowered for all that, good to know.
Last I heard, PSX emulation is choppy in the 3d games. Even on an overclocked Pi.
They may have fixed that, though.
The other set up that also plays a few, not all, classics is a Wii U.
I still leave my gaming for consoles as I find any alternative lacking in some way.
Really sounds interesting, but the fact that you can’t pair any usb controller/keyboard kills it for me. I could do that with the Ouya, I think these guys just want to make more money.
Gaming/PC peripherals are their bread and butter…
You can on the nexus player and this is the same OS, so it should work
Doesn’t Steam piggyback on GRID anyway? I thought it did? At any rate, my Shield Tablet already rendered my Ouya obselete. Probably will pass on this myself.
Pretty cool, but man is that thing ugly.
That logo looks like something off of an Ed Hardy t-shirt.
I want one! This will be awesome for emulators. I’m excited to play Android games on it as well. Sure, why not? I’m sure we’ve all played Android games and wished we had a controller instead of a touch screen. Castle of Illusion here I come! ….if it supports controllers!
Looks good, but they should sell an optional Bluetooth remote with a built-in microphone.
Oh good lord, why does everything have to glow these days? Put a tiny little dim LED on the thing and be done, don’t make it light up my entire entertainment center. That is extremely distracting in the dark while watching a movie.