What you see above is part of a new filing on the Federal Communications Commission, also known simply as the FCC, made by Sony under the code NSZ-GU1. AS you can see by the code, it follows the line of every other Google TV released by Sony, like the NSZ-GT1 or the NSZ-GS8, and the FCC filing also describes the device merely as “Internet Player”. The strange thing about this Google TV device, is that it has a FCC filing, unlike Sony’s previous devices, and it’s dated June 20th while naming the Taiwanese company Wistron as the manufacturer, as a bonus, it comes with a USB cable.
As noted by Engadget, the info was found by GTVHacker member cj_000 who revealed the finding on a Tweet. On the notes there’s a test layout that looks similar to the one Google had on their FCC filing for the Chromecast, giving us a hint that this may be a Chromecast device, or at least one that’s compatible with the new standard from Google, because aside from that, there are some major differences with the dongle Google revealed a few weeks ago, most notably, an IR blaster and Bluetooth, both missing on the Chromecast.
Google has already said that Chromecast will be added to Google TV and the Google TV Google+ page confirmed that they were not dead and that OEMs were going to release new Google TV hardware. It could be that this new Sony device will come with a new version of GoogleTV that includes Chromecast, this new version might even be more in line with Android and it’s current state and version, we already know that Sundar Pichai said that Google TV “will be a full-fledged Android for television”.
I’d really like to see Google breath new life into GoogleTV with new features, a simplified interface and user experience and better integration with Android devices. If Android works great in many screen sizes, why is GoogleTV so different? Android 4.3 added some code for Android to work better with high dpi screens and even mentions that this is meant for TVs and not regular everyday apps.
All points to Google closing the gap between Android and GoogleTV, most likely having the latter be just stock Android with a few simple additions, I know most people would be very happy if that happens.