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Nexus Q hands-on: The “Q” stands for “que the heck?”

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[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/44916174 w=560&h=315]

We had some time to unbox and set up our Nexus Q from Google I/O, and the results were what they were.

Basically, it allows you to use a Jelly Bean Android device to control videos, movies, music, and images in your home, either on a TV or through speakers, which can be connected through hard wires.

The setup is pretty simple, but once we got to the end of it, we were a bit underwhelmed by the results. This correspondent’s official stance has always been curmudgeonly but consistent: Until home media devices are as easy and intuitive as putting a record on a record player, home media systems (like Sonos and Nexus Q, in particular) aren’t going to see much adoption outside of hardcore nerds like you and me.


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Unfortunately, most hardcore nerds like you and me likely already have complex and costly home media solutions in place. Here’s what our go-to media guru Tom Cheredar had to say about that in his initial review:

First of all, a number of competitors already offer this streaming functionality — and as a complimentary feature. The Apple TV’s Airplay enables TV screen sharing in addition to its support for several third-party media services like Netflix, YouTube, Vimeo, MLB, NHL, and more. And with the purchase of cloud-media startup mSpot, Samsung is also planning to offer this kind of functionality on all its devices, complete with a Google Play-like digital media store. It’s worth noting that Samsung is also one of the most popular sellers of Android-based mobile devices. All that said, plenty of other platforms/devices offer far more than the Nexus Q.

We’ll be sending our Q-ball (haha, see what we did there?!) off to Tom shortly for further review, but so far, our conclusion is that this little fella still has a long way to go.