Sonos Is Venturing Into Video With a Streaming Box

Did anybody have “Sonos enters video” on their bingo card for 2025? We’ve been hearing whispers and rumors for a short while, but Sonos has been so deeply entrenched in audio since it shipped its first product in 2005, that we simply grew accustomed to it staying in that niche.

Besides, the TV streaming device market is already dominated by several mega-corporations and their streaming boxes: Apple TV, Amazon’s Fire TV, Google’s Chromecast, and Google TV Streamer (the Chromecast’s replacement), plus the plucky but significant Roku. Did we need another?

Need or not, Sonos thinks it has a unique angle for this market, which struggles to differentiate one device radically from another, and the details on this Android-based video streamer—codenamed Pinewood— come via The Verge’s Chris Welch.

the unifying hub

Welch mentions being told Pinewood’s user interface is “beautiful,” even though it appears he hasn’t used it personally yet. It’d better be, if the ace up its sleeve is to unify all the disparate streaming platforms to a greater degree than any TV streaming device currently does.

“Sonos plans to combine content from numerous platforms including Netflix, Max, and Disney Plus under a single, unified software experience,” he writes. “Universal search across streaming accounts will be supported. …I’m told this is a cornerstone of Pinewood’s appeal.”

Don’t expect any wood-grained throwback to the days of hi-fi audio systems because of its codename, though. Welch says he’s seen images of Pinewood, “and it’s about as nondescript as streaming hardware gets. Viewed from the top, the device is a flattened black square and slightly thicker than a deck of trading cards.”

Also according to Welch’s reporting, you won’t have to rely so heavily upon a Sonos soundbar to configure a slew of Sonos speakers into a true surround system. Right now, a soundbar coordinates the subwoofer(s), rear-channel, and side-channel speakers. Pinewood will be able to act as the hub to coordinate them all, rather than a soundbar.

“Sonos engineers have been frustrated over the years by unpredictable issues between its soundbars and certain TVs,” writes Welch. “These can include audio sync delays, brief signal dropouts, and other bugs that can prove challenging to reproduce, let alone fix. With Pinewood, Sonos aims to take greater control of the I/O stack.”

In the vein of tying together all these frayed and sometimes uneven systems, Pinewood will have several HDMI ports with passthrough functionality, so it’ll act as a hub to quarterback not just the TV but also aftermarket speakers and subwoofers so that they play more nicely together.

Downsides? Well, it’s Sonos, so expect somebody to show up and shake you by the ankles until all your change falls out of your pockets. Welch says his sources put the price between $200 and $400.

The Apple TV 4K runs $190 for the 128GB model, and though I was impressed by its speed and design, it’s twice as expensive as the Roku Ultra 4K which I called the best deal in 4K TV streaming devices. Even at $200, the Sonos would be a very premium product priced above its most expensive competitor in the streaming device space.

The Sonos potentially costing up to twice as much is enough to make me shoot milk out of my nose, even if I haven’t been drinking milk.

But Sonos likes to hang out in the deep-pocketed end of the audio market, so for its first foray into video, it may just stick with the customer base it knows best. After all, it worked for Tesla and Apple. And Sonos, so far.