Posts

Showing posts with the label Smart Stick

Sony’s New Dongle vs. Google’s Chromecast Dongle

Image
Sony is about to make a formal announcement on September 15 concerning their new dongle, the Bravia Smart Stick. We saw this device  coming through at the FCC  earlier this month, on a  tip from a tweet,  with the link that leads you to the drawing at the FCC. It looks like a rectangle wafer cookie that plugs into the MHL port on only Sony TVs made in 2013 and later, and a smaller cable that plugs into the USB port for power. This is much like the  Chromecast dongle , except it plugs into an HDMI slot, along with a connection for the USB port or an adaptor that you can plug into a wall socket. I was curious exactly what a MHL port was and exactly how it worked – It stands for Mobile High-Definition Link, and was the brainchild of a group of heavy hitters, such as, Nokia, Samsung, Silicon Image, Sony, and Toshiba, as a specification that could be used to connect smartphones and tablets to an HDTV.  This sounds a lot like the function of the Chromecast dongle.  The MHL supports 1080p