Tech Companies Battle for Your Post-TV Living Room

What’s the Latest Development?

Google’s latest vision of the post-TV world, embodied in a household device that streams video and music from the Web, will be pulled from the shelves as the software giant struggles to adapt to building hardware. Called Nexus Q, the device “plugs into TVs or speakers so its owners can listen to music or play video from their Android phones or tablets. It is similar to devices like Apple TV, Boxee, Roku and Google TV.” Q is Google’s latest effort in the race to control the post-TV living room—the TV shows and movies we watch, the music we listen to and the advertisements we see while sitting on the sofa.

What’s the Big Idea?

Besides Google, technology companies like Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.com are working hard to build a household device that will stream and store media files, knowing that people are far less likely to switch products once they have a substantial amount of media stored on a given device. “[Google] has said it wants to tackle not just the entertainment space but the whole home, eventually connecting coffee pots to the Internet so they can be turned off remotely, for instance, or refrigerators so they can order milk when it is running low.” For now, however, the Q has gone back to the drawing board. 

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