Company Envizion has announced a new gadget that will bring the power of Android to your TV screen.
Oh, wait. They already did that with Google TV. The difference here is Envizion’s device may actually be cool.
The company’s creation is called the Evo 2, but it’s not a smartphone like Sprint’s Evo 4G. It’s a set-top box that connects to your TV for one purpose – video games.
Its appeal is in the open quality of Android. “Evo 2 is an open console and gamers can modify any part of the system,” described Envizion CEO Derrick Samuels.
This product could not have come at a more appropriate time. Right now Sony is reeling from a multi billion-dollar hacking attack that was believed to have been triggered by the company’s legal pursuit of George Hotz – a guy whose only crime was tampering with the PS3 and showing others how to do the same.
Sony has been firmly stomping its foot on any sort of independent PS3 creation, making it impossible for unauthorized controllers or peripherals, as well as homebrew games, to be played on the system.
So the Evo 2 is a very fresh move in the opposite direction. The whole idea of Android is that anyone can create content for it and share with the world.
The console will reportedly be able to run games that are already available in the Android Market, but Envizion no doubt wants developers to create new, ambitious games designed for the TV experience.
There’s a lot of hardware to power the thing, with a 1.2 GHz Samsung chip and 512 MB of DDR2 memory under the hood. It will also come with an HDMI cable packed in (why don’t more products do this?). It will ship with Android 2.2 but is likely to be upgraded over time.
The Evo 2 will be available this fall.
