If you rely on a Google Hub smart display to show your photos and tell you alll about the news, you might be able to watch more than the daily events and YouTube music.
A smart display can be a great way to command your home’s lighting or control the music playing at the time, and it even offers a handy way of showing photos from your life like a constantly rotating digital photo frame, but depending on what you have and the services you subscribe to, it might just be able to do more.
Google’s smart displays are proving to be an example of that lately, with service support now rolling out to Australian Nest Hub models (formerly the Google Home Hub) and Nest Hub Max models, making it possible to watch TV from them. Kinda. Sorta.
It’s an addition that’s happening as of this week, as support for Netflix rolls out to the Google displays, alongside Stan, Foxtel, and YouTube Kids, if you have those accounts working. It means if you have a Nest Hub Max in your kitchen, you can ask Google to open Netflix and play any numbers of shows, helping you to play catch up to TV, or even get some inspiration as you cook. You might tune into Heston on Crazy Delicious and get some ideas, or even check out Jon Favreau’s The Chef Show to find out what El Hefe is doing for some cool recipes. Or just watch something else, entirely.
Stan supports the Nest Hub devices, as does Foxtel, both of which support a level of voice, provided you say “Hey Google, watch” and the name of your show “on Stan” or “on Foxtel”. If you have kids, it might be “Hey Google, watch Hey Duggee on Stan” to get the smart display playing the right content to keep the little ones entertained.
There aren’t a heap of services that support this year, but because Google’s Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max work as Chromecast enabled device, you can also use other apps to stream directly to the smart display if need be.
As for whether support is rolling out to other compatible smart displays, such as those made by Lenovo or JBL, that remains to be seen as of yet. We’ll check with Google and find out, but for now, if you’re a Google Hub owner with a screen, online TV viewing appears to be waiting for you. Go nuts.
