In September 2020Google presented its Chromecast with Google TV, the HDMI dongles that went a step further than the traditional Chromecast and became independent from the mobile. That product has proven to be popular, but competition in this field is fierce and it seems that a replacement is in sight.
This is confirmed by documents obtained by 9to5Google that reveal the existence of a product codenamed Boreal. That new Chromecast with Google TV is expected to offer AV1 codec support, but there is also an opportunity to improve the limited storage capacity of the original model.
More quality, less data needed
The AV1 codec is important not only because it is freely licensed, but also because it offer better compression that maintains the quality (or improvement) of video and images but requires less data in those contents.
That’s important for more efficient broadcasting and there are already several platforms that have started using it —Netflix between ellas—, but the Chromecast with original Google TV did not offer support for this codec, something that seems to be fixed with its codenamed successor Boreal.
There are other improvements that are proposed for this device. First of all, your SoC, that even being decent (Amlogic S905D3) was somewhat far from devices with which it competed and that are still popular despite being much older —such as the NVIDIA TV Shield—.
It does not seem likely that Google will take advantage of its recent experience with the Google Tensors of its Pixel 6 here, but perhaps it is an opportunity to integrate these new Chromecast a cropped version of those chips.
Another area where the new Chromecast with Google TV could see notable improvements is in storage capacity: the 8 GB of capacity fell somewhat short for many users when installing various applications, and that new product may offer greater capabilities here.
Via | 9to5Google
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