Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that Google was developing a home-entertainment system that streams music wirelessly throughout the home and would be marketed under the company’s own brand. The first thing that came to mind was Google’s Project Tungsten from last year’s Google I/O.

For those that don’t remember, Google showed off a few products that were all part of their Android @ Home vision. Among those products were a couple Android @ Home hubs dubbed “Project Tungsten.” These devices acted as standalone Google Music end-points as well as a bridge to the Android @ Home network. The Tungsten devices at Google I/O used audio out to connect to a pair of speakers and showed off tablet and phone control over a user’s cloud stored music. When controlled by an Android device, a user’s music could be streamed across multiple speakers in multiple rooms (again, think Sonos). If the WSJ is talking about a Google branded home-entertainment system that streams music wirelessly, then they must be talking about Project Tungsten.

Another example of a Tungsten devices included one with NFC support. They showed off a demo in reference to purchasing a new CD. Once at home with the new CD, you could touch the CD to the Tungsten device and it would automatically add it to your music library. Touch it again and it will start playing that CD. Of course this is all based on a market where CD’s still exists and come packaged with NFC chips.

It’s been almost almost a year since we saw these Tungsten devices and one can only imagine what else Google has implemented into them. I’m quite excited to see how far they’ve come, and I’m even more excited that Google is going to be using their own branding. I can’t wait to see these make it to market and look forward to the day I can control most of my home’s “accessories” with my Android device.

To see these Tungsten devices in action, fast-forward to 9:51 in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD3Q4kJhD5w

• SourceWSJ