Sony Android TV : Australia

Sony Android TV : Australia

Android on the big screen is coming of age with Sony's latest Smart TVs.
Running Android on a television or set-top box is one of those ideas which looks great on paper but generally fails to live up to expectations.

Sony's latest effort, available on most of its 2015 range including the 75-inch Ultra HD model I looked at Monday, offers the slickest Android television implementation I've seen yet, but it comes at a price.

We're not just talking about a re-skinned version of Android as you see on many home entertainment devices. Android TV is a flavour of Android 5.0 Lollipop designed from the ground up by Google to run on a Smart TV.

This means that the interface and apps are all customised for a 10-foot user experience from the couch and they play nicely with the remote control. It also means that you don't get dumped into clunky phone-style Android menus as you delve into the advanced settings.

The trade-off for this elegant user experience is that you're limited to a small corner of the Google Play App Store which offers apps optimised for Android TV.

It's an understandable restriction when you consider that it's intended as a form of user experience quality control, but it's still frustrating if you're under the impression that any old Android app will run on the television.

Keep in mind that even the apps available for Android TV might lag behind the mainstream Android app version when it comes to updates with new features.

Entertain me
Living within this app ecosystem might not bother you, depending on why you want your television to run Android. For me it's all about content and media players and here Android TV excels.

I'd say tight access to Google Play movies, TV shows and music is the number one reason to embrace Android on your television. All you content purchases, rentals and subscriptions are at your fingertips without the need to reach for a mobile device and mess around with local streaming – it's the equivalent of what iGadget owners enjoy via the Apple TV.

It's also great to see a wide range of third-party Android local streaming media player apps like Plex, VLC, MX Player and Kodi (formerly XBMC) all optimised for the television and remote control. If you use these apps on other devices then you'll feel right and home and Android TV might let you retire your media centre PC or streaming media set-top box.

To top things off, the television's built-in media player apps also support DLNA. You won't find any of these great local streaming features on an Apple TV, not without hacking it.

Get Smart
Scroll through the slick Android menus and you'll also find standard Smart TV apps such as FreeviewPlus, Netflix (with Ultra HD support and an HDR update on the way), Quickflix, iView, SBS, Plus7, Crackle, YouTube, Pandora, TuneIn and others.

The television's new X1 processor keeps everything smooth and responsive. You can also tap into a limited range of games, with the option of connecting a PlayStation or third-party controller.

There's a reasonable range of titles catering to casual gamers, although it's hard to see people getting too excited when these games are available on other devices. Serious gamers will find a few titles to grab their attention, but I don't see why you'd bother paying again for a limited copy of a game you already own on another platform.

Unfortunately there's no support for PlayStation Now game streaming service in Australia, which is the feature serious gamers are likely looking for from a Sony device.

If you want to use Android apps that aren't available for Android TV, the television supports Chromecast streaming and screen mirroring. This gives you the best of both worlds and might help overcome your frustrations over the limited number of Android TV apps.

So what's the verdict?
Think long and hard about what you want to do with Android on this television and whether it's worth the expense if you won't find the apps on you want in the app store.

In theory just about everything you can do in Android TV on this television, apart from gaming with a PS controller, you could do on your television using an Android smartphone or tablet via screen mirroring.

The beauty of Android TV is that it cuts down on your reliance on mobile devices for some tasks, particularly when it comes to multimedia. Now you can just flop down on the couch with the remote and watch your digital content the old-fashioned way.

If this sounds appealing then Android TV might be for you. Even if you're happy to drive your television from your phone or tablet, Android TV might appeal to members of your household who aren't.

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Excellent Android Projector

What Is It?

A jack of all trades and a master of none. The ZTE Spro 2 is a tiny, kind of awkward Android tablet (running Android 4.4.4, if you must know), a sort of large and bulky 4G LTE hotspot and a portable, 200 Lumen projector. It’s pretty awesome, but also completely awkward and weird. It’s very much a “sometimes” gadget, something that doesn’t have a regular place in my day-to-day life, but can be handy to have around.

Using It

OK, let me level with you: I called the ZTE Spro 2 part tablet, but that’s not completely true. Yes, it has a landscape-oriented touchscreen with an Android interface, but using it for more than a few minutes is kind of uncomfortable.

You can blame the chassis — the Spro 2 is primarily a Mini Projector, and it’s shaped like one: It’s a big, heavy, inch-thick brick. You aren’t going to use it to check your email, play touch games, browse the web or anything like that: this device’s screen is just a means to end… and that’s ok! This thing exists to project movies, and it’s surprisingly great at that.

Getting started is easy: The typical viewing session consists of tapping the smartphone-sized touchscreen a few times to launch a streaming app (Netflix, Hulu, Google Play, whatever), picking your programing and tapping a floating “projector” icon that’s always hovering in the screen’s upper right hand corner.

That’s it. The projector focuses automatically, the quick menu lets you adjust brightness (between low, medium and high, although only low and medium are available if you’re running on battery) and it’s pretty great.

If you want to get really advanced, the options menu lets you manually adjust the focus or digitally tilt the projection to match the angle of a wall or ceiling. You can manage Android projection, Miracast or HDMI inputs — more than enough options to provide a deeper projection experience, if you need it.

The problem I had was figuring where it fit in my life.

What I Actually Used It For

As a portable projector, the ZTE Spro 2 doesn’t fit easily into my life. At home, I already have a 40-inch television and a dozen other screens on which I can enjoy content. If I’m going over to a friend’s house for movie night, they probably also have a TV, a solid internet connection, or sometimes even a high-end home theatre projector. For the Spro 2 to make sense, I had to put myself into a situation where I needed a large screen and a stable internet connection in a place where I would normally have neither. That was hard.

See, the projector has its limits: It can only go up to medium brightness on battery, which makes it pretty worthless outdoors during daylight hours (though it was perfectly usable indoors, with the lights on, as long as the projector was within four or five feet of the target surface). I tried using it to watch a movie in my backyard BBQ pit, but it was pretty hard to see until the sun started setting.
The best use I can imagine the Spro 2 is camping. Maybe it’s late at night and you can’t sleep — it’s already dark and tent material makes a great makeshift projector screen, why not watch a movie? But… I’m not going camping anytime soon.
I did manage to watch a few movies on the Spro 2 while my TV was unplugged over the weekend (I was rearranging the furniture), but that doesn’t happen on a regular basis — and while the Spro 2 is technically a full Android tablet, it’s too awkward to use for more than a couple of minutes. So what did I use it for? Well, it turns out it’s a pretty good LTE hotspot. When my internet died last week, the Spro was there — pumping fast, reliable LTE wifi to all the devices in my house. It’s absurdly large for a LTE hotspot, true — but the functionality made it useful to me on a more regular basis — power outages, train rides, airport layovers. That’s a big deal.

Like

The projector is smart enough to know if its projecting on a slanted surface, and will automatically adjust the angle of the projection to compensate for the surface. It made watching TV on my ceiling much nicer.
Battery Life: The projector was able to Stream Netflix over LTE for 2:40 minutes, enough to watch almost any film.

In addition to mirroring its own screen and projecting Miracast devices, the ZTE Spro 2 has a full-sized HDMI input.

No Like

The audio quality is iffy at best. Yeah, you can hear everything just fine, but it’s not particularly loud and there’s no discernible stereo separation. I didn’t expect much more from the tiny box’s speakers, but the disconnect between where the screen was and where the audio coming from was noticeable. Pair it with a bluetooth speaker if you want a better audio experience.
Battery Life: The projector was able to Stream Netflix over LTE for 2:40 minutes, not quite enough to watch any movie in my library.
HDMI input (and projection) is capped at 720p. Hardly a dealbreaker, but definitely a bummer.
You know that micro USB cable you use to charge every phone and tablet you own? It won’t work with the Spro 2.

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