Verizon appears to be working on the first Android TV soundbar since the flopped JBL Link Bar

Ben Schoon | Oct 7 2021 - 9:20 am PT

As Android TV continues to expand, Verizon is stepping up to make another new Android TV device, but this time it looks to be a soundbar…

The first soundbar that also put Android TV on your connected television was the JBL Link Bar, released in 2019 after multiple delays. The concept was excellent, but the execution ultimately flopped, and, to date, we haven’t seen a successor to that product or another soundbar that uses Android TV in this way.

What we have seen, though, are multiple soundbars that use the same idea of integrating smart TV features into a soundbar, but with Amazon’s Fire TV platform or Roku, often at much lower costs.

From the looks of a new FCC listing spotted by @AndroidTV_Rumor, Verizon is working on a soundbar that runs Android TV, presumably using the Operator Tier similar to the Stream TV we reviewed earlier this year. In fact, the listing directly references the product as the “Stream TV Soundbar.” The new hardware is produced by Askey, the same Asus sub-brand that makes Google’s ADT-3 developer device.

There’s not a lot we can gather from this list, but one other tidbit is support for Android TV 11 on this product.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see when this comes to market, especially to see how it compares to the JBL Link Bar which failed primarily on its laggy performance that became obvious over time.