We’ve covered the last Hello Show from Orange back in November and at the time they promised to bring us the Bloc, a connected mobile video projector for the home. This surprised many back then as it was Orange’s first stab at their own hardware and while the concept was strikingly promising we were left in the dark to when would it finally be available.
Orange has finally announced availability of the device and looks like new Orange customers will be able to get it from 199€, and current Orange customers for 399€. The idea that multimedia content shouldn’t be restricted to our living room seems to be getting some traction, with Keecker being another example of similar a similar initiative. From a conceptual point of view the idea behind a device like the Bloc is that in a household with multiple people sometimes you want to watch different types of content, and you don’t want to be restricted to the living room where you TV is sits in prime real estate.
In fact if you have a Bloc sitting around you can just grab it (it weighs 1,6 Kg) and take it to your room, the kitchen or the terrace – it does have a 2 hour battery autonomy which is enough to watch a TV show in bed. Provided that you have Wi-Fi signal you can access Orange’s TV service plus all the content on your Orange Cloud, your smartphone, and virtually any device you can plug into the Bloc (good port variety) plus Bluetooth & NFC.
Unleashing multimedia content across the home is a sound proposition and the fact that it obviously can access Orange’s TV & VOD services make the Bloc a very enticing product. It still strikes me as bizarre that today when we want to watch something digital like a film we have to decide whether to do it on a huge TV display in the living room or a tiny smartphone or tablet. No matter how geeky your setup might be this is true for most of us which means there is indeed huge potential in bridging that gap.