T-Mobile is launching its own Google TV dongle to compete with the Chromecast

Complete with a built-in Ethernet port

Although Google's newest TV platform has been around for over a year now, we have yet to see it expand beyond a handful of offerings . In the US, the only such device so far is Google's Chromecast with Google TV, which launched late last year, and on the Indian market, the Realme 4K Smart Google TV Stick has also joined the list. Now, another device is coming to store shelves, and it's arriving from a source you might not expect. T-Mobile quietly announced its TVision Hub today, and in many ways, it's the souped-up Chromecast we've all been wanting.

The device features the same form factor as the current Chromecast and previous ones before it — a circle-shaped puck with a short HDMI cable coming out of it, meant to hang in the back of your TV (via 9to5Google). That being said, it has several improvements in terms of both I/O and its controller. T-Mobile makes the latter a big selling point, as it pulls double-duty as a universal remote with power and input buttons for your TV, complete with shortcuts for Netflix, YouTube, and presumably a T-Mobile-branded streaming service. It also sports an Ethernet port, which the Chromecast lacks, allowing you to connect directly to your wired Internet rather than only using Wi-Fi to stream your favorite movies and series.

If this brand name is jumbling around in your memory, it's for a good reason. T-Mobile used to have a streaming service called TVision, and a dongle to go with it, named — you guessed it — TVision Hub. That particular device was powered by Android TV, and T-Mobile tragically killed off the TVision live TV service just five months after it was launched, with the complany using YouTube TV as a replacement. The hub now lives on — this time in a Google TV-flavored package.

This device uses the Amlogic S905Y4 chip — it's equipped with AV1 decoding and, in general, is a newer and stronger chipset than what we can find in the Chromecast with Google TV. Plus, it's running Android TV OS 11 out of the box, an update that still hasn't landed on Google's latest streaming stick.

Although T-Mobile has a listing up on its website for the TVision, we don't know when it might become available. It does look like it'll be offered free to new Home Internet customers.

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