Google announced a new media hub at its Google I/O developer conference, and surprisingly, it doesn't use Google TV. The Google Nexus Q is instead a limited and streamlined media player that interfaces with Google Play but lacks the many apps and services of Google TV devices.
The Nexus Q is a $299 ball you connect to your home theater or speaker system and use to access YouTube videos, as well as music, movies, and TV on Google Play. It lets you wirelessly stream media from your Android smartphone or tablet to the device like Apple's AirPlay feature.
The parallels to Apple TV are clear, and that means Apple's little media device could have some Android-based competition it wasn't expecting.
Online Services
While the Nexus Q uses a version of Android 4.0, it isn't a Google TV device. Instead of loading Android apps and running many services through the Google TV interface or even stock Android, it's limited to Google Play, Google's music, movie, and TV market. Google Play is also the company's app store, but the Nexus Q doesn't seem to be able to use apps beyond Google Play media and YouTube. There's certainly room for Netflix and Hulu Plus at the very least, which leaves the device lacking in features.
Apple TV, on the other hand, offers a similar media selection to Google Play through iTunes, though if you want the same support of media stored in the iTunes cloud and not on media stored in the local network, you need to subscribe to iTunes Match at $25 per year. However, the Apple TV also costs a third as much as the Nexus Q, so you're spending less on basically the same feature. It also supports Netflix, along with a few other online services (but no Hulu Plus), so it just barely edges out the Nexus Q's service list.
Media Streaming
The Nexus Q can play music from your Android smartphone or tablet through Google Play Music, and you can push YouTube videos from your device to the Nexus Q like AirPlay. This is the audio and video connection Android device users have been waiting for, putting the Android platform on similar footing as Apple devices. The full extent of this media streaming has yet to be seen.
Apple TV, on the other hand, uses a well-established system that does the same thing. AirPlay came first, and while it still sometimes has kinks it's also not in the test stages anymore. Since this is Google's first product with the same kind of streaming feature, and considering the rocky start AirPlay had, we can't be sure the Nexus Q will flawlessly stream local media from your Android devices. Fortunately, it also supports Bluetooth, so hopeully you can stream audio from your mobile device to the Nexus Q directly even if you can't flawlessly "push" it at first.
Home Theater Connections
In this, the Nexus Q has a slight edge. It has analog audio ports that support banana plugs and a built-in 25-watt amp, so you can plug it directly into a set of stereo speakers even if they're unpowered. It also supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC communication, which gives it multiple options for connecting devices and transferring media to its 16GB onboard storage.
The Apple TV doesn't have an amp or analog speaker outputs, and it doesn't support Bluetooth or NFC. It also doesn't have any onboard storage for media, but to be fair, it isn't exactly clear how the Nexus Q's storage will be used. The Apple TV is strictly for connecting to a home theater or HDTV, while the Nexus Q is clearly intended for audio systems as much as HDTVs.
The Google Nexus Q raises a lot of questions, and until we get it into the lab we can't be sure how well it works as a media hub. However, so far it looks less like Google's competitor to the Apple TV and more like a wireless audio system like Sonos' products. It's an odd niche Google's trying to find room in, and one much smaller than the one taken up by Apple TV and Roku (and VIzio and Sony's upcoming Google TV devices).
For more, see PCMag's Hands On With Google's Nexus Q. Also check out Google Nexus 7 vs. Amazon Kindle Fire: Small-Screen Tablet Showdown.