Motorola To Show Android Set Top Box at CEATEC

A Japanese set-top box utilising Google Android’s OS shows what’s in store for the gadget market

Well, it may not be available in Australia – in fact it might never come here – but the Motorola au Box set top box has something that other set top boxes don’t have – Google’s Android operating system.

Reports out of Japan and the UK say the set top box will appear at Japanese gadget show CEATEC later this year. Some thought netbooks and PCs would be the first to utilise the open source OS, but Japanese Telco KDDI asked Motorola to put the unit together and viola, here it is.

So what can it do? According to KDDI it will be able to play, store and rip digital movies through a television set. You should also be able to transcode the movies for use on other mobile devices via the telecommunications company’s own network.

What this nifty little unit does show – and we are assuming it works OK because haven’t got our hands on it – is what Android is capable of doing.