Sonos has ended work on a high-end streaming set-top box that was expected to launch sometime in 2025, reports The Verge. Sonos informed employees of the streaming box's cancelation in a meeting today, and has reassigned those that were working on the product to other teams.
The set-top box was supposed to be Sonos' major product for the second half of 2025, and Sonos spent considerable resources on it. It was almost completed, and was even beta tested for months, but interim CEO Tom Conrad has decided to reprioritize Sonos' roadmap, and a push into video is no longer happening at the current time.
Sonos planned to compete with the Apple TV and other streaming boxes with its now-canceled "Pinewood" project, and the device would have been priced between $200 and $400. It was described as a simple black box with a "beautiful" Android interface that offered content from Netflix, Max, Disney Plus, and other streaming services.
Sonos wanted to reduce fragmentation in the streaming ecosystem, and to distinguish the streaming box from competing products, it would have doubled as an HDMI switch. Users would have been able to plug in gaming consoles, soundbars, and other devices using passthrough functionality, and it is said to have solved a latency problem that long annoyed Sonos.
Sonos plans to work on software improvements to continue to repair the damage done by last May's disastrous app update.
