The next Google TV might be a Nexus

The imminent relaunch of the Google TV brand might also include a change in name, aligning Google's big-screen devices with its Nexus phones and tablets.

Google TV has struggled to find any kind of success in the US and has not been released in Australia apart from the unloved Sony Internet Player with Google TV. It was a US$100 million mistake making a Google TV device for Logitech, and other high-profile brands abandoning the platform since 2011 further doomed any chance it had.

But according to a report in The Information, a 2014 reboot of the platform is in the works and may include a name change. The new set-top box could be called Nexus TV, tying in Google's TV-screen aspirations with its continuing success in its own-brand Nexus smartphones and tablets.

There will be an announcement from the Google TV team at CES in January, according to Google's Sundar Pichai, and it's likely that it will include a new device running an up-to-date, and constantly updated, version of Android.

A Nexus TV set-top box could bring the best of Google's lean-back Android apps — like YouTube, video-streaming services and games — to the biggest screen in consumers' houses. It would face little competition from Apple, whose Apple TV seems to be little more than an afterthought for a company almost entirely focused on its iPhone and iPad devices.