If you bought a TV before 2010, there’s a good chance that your set can’t check out the variety of services available on the Internet. But Australian e-tailer Kogan has a fix for that, offering a serving of Ice Cream Sandwich for any brand of television.
Available to order from today, Kogan is setting forth a $99 HDMI dongle upon the world, offering a similar specs to what appears in tablets and smartphones with a customised version of Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich ready for use.
Inside, there’s a 1GHz processor, dedicated graphics chip, and 4GB of internal storage, but there’s a microSD slot on the dongle in case you want to upgrade and move more files to it, including movies and music. WiFi is also there in the form of 802.11 b/g/n, allowing you to jump on your home wireless network and surf the web, grab apps and games, and stream movies.
A full-size USB port on the back will let you use a keyboard and mouse with your net-connected TV, and to coincide with this, Kogan has also unveiled an all-in-one keyboard and trackpad for $39.
“The future of TV is all about the Internet: bringing the entire web to the biggest screen in your home,” said Ruslan Kogan, CEO and founder of the Australian e-tailer. “We’re shifting away from watching what the networks tell us to watch. With devices like the Smart TV dongle, we can now watch what we want, when we want, without the hefty price tag.”
Kogan has said that there are “no messy cables”, but we’re not so sure you’ll come off with just a nice and easy dongle plugging in. While we’ve yet to see review product, the design shows a mini-USB port on the side, meaning there will probably be a cable coming out of the side of the dongle that needs to be plugged into a USB port or a wall adaptor.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first Smart TV “conversion” product we’ve seen, with Samsung announcing a similar concept earlier in the year which integrates a webcam and access to Skype. Sadly, no release date has been set for this in Australia as of yet.
Meanwhile, Kogan’s Agora Smart TV HDMI Dongle is available for order today for $99, with an expected dispatch date of July 31. If you grab this, make sure you’re not using Internet Explore 7 or below when ordering, otherwise you may find yourself charged an extra 6.8%.
I have a Toshiba Regza bought in 2009 with HDMI ports, but the dongle simply doesn’t boot on it. Checked out the ports, power, connections, other devices etc and it’s down to the unit not working as it says it would. Plugged it into a new Samsung and it booted ok, but crashes on setting resolution to 1080p. Also, cannot “see”my NAS where my media is stored. I’m sending it back under Kogan’s warranty, there’s a bit more work to be done on it yet!
bought this and works ok a bit slow and definitely get the keyboard as the supplied remote is useless except wanted it for skypevideo calling (do not bother trying your pc cam- the software needs windows os ) I cant seem to find a webcam option to buy that will load an an android platform. Reading different forum platforms and I’m not the only one struggling with this