Zuku, a leading satellite and fixed internet provider seems to be planning to release and Android TV box in the future.
Zuku is working on an Android TV box. Interesting stuff. But also it can end in tears. pic.twitter.com/IWkpxdiNNt
— Kenyan Citizen 🇰🇪 (@BeingWesh) June 25, 2020
This image has been floating around gives us a hint of what this product will be if it launches.
It is a decoder that runs on Android TV, which comes with its own benefits of installing apps from the Play Store. It is interesting that they have singled out YouTube but since it runs on Android TV, we wonder whether they will support installing other streaming services like Netflix or Hulu. We will have to wait and see whether this will be supported.
The second bit is that it will support DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) technology although it is not clear what DVB standard they will use, since we have the likes of DVB-T that is used for terrestrial TV, DVB-S is for satellite TV and so on.
The third feature is that it will decode 1080p streams. 1080p is good enough for the majority of people but since we are in the age of 4K, it is interesting that they didn’t decide to have a 4K decoder for future proofing.
It also seems to have USB, where we don’t know how many USB ports it will have and its configuration. We also have no idea whether it will be connected to the TV using the ancient RCA composite connectors (yellow, white and red connectors) for audio and video or they will use HDMI to connect to the TV.
The last bit is the seemingly new bouquet that Zuku will launch with a new bouquet called Zuku SmartPlay. This bouquet is not listed among their satellite bouquets which makes us believe that it is a new offering.
The last time we saw an ISP have an Android TV box was Safaricom with their Big Box 2 and Faiba with their Faiba TV Android box. Mutlichoice also announced plans to launch a new 4K decoder that shipped with Netflix so this is an interesting year for these content aggregators.
I think what they are going to do is to upgrade their TV decoder for their triple play service. And now that I think about it, I wonder what took them so long.
The DVB technology they use is, Cable.