Google Chromecast

[jintoku]

I have another question about my impending TV purchase. What "Smart" features do I still need, and which ones are redundant given the Chromecast?

Seems like YouTube and Netflix are made redundant by Chromecast. Which other features are still relevant? Are there any particular HDTV makers out there that allow one to save money on the gimmicks while investing it into bigger&better image quality?

 

[zerocool84]

I have another question about my impending TV purchase. What "Smart" features do I still need, and which ones are redundant given the Chromecast?

Seems like YouTube and Netflix are made redundant by Chromecast. Which other features are still relevant? Are there any particular HDTV makers out there that allow one to save money on the gimmicks while investing it into bigger&better image quality?

Most modern sets are smart, you have to specifically look for good ones that aren't. That's all up to you in that area. Google is your friend.

 

[Remobz]

I have older HDTV's with no fancy built in "smart" features. Presently, I just hook up my laptop to HDTV using a HDMI cable to watch movies or youtube.

It still gets the job done. But the price is good though.

 

[jintoku]

Thanks for the answers guys.

Here's another question, do you think the Chromecast would work with 720p resolution? I'm thinking of getting a projector with that res but can't find "supported resolutions" information.

 

[vshah]

Thanks for the answers guys.

Here's another question, do you think the Chromecast would work with 720p resolution? I'm thinking of getting a projector with that res but can't find "supported resolutions" information.

i'm sure it would work just fine. hdmi devices can report supported resolutions to one another

 

[SAWYER]

http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/0...uses-vlc-to-transcode-practically-any-format/

 

[Red Storm]

And for Android devices, Koushik posted beta #3 for Aircast on his G+ page.

 

[AzNKiD]

I was playing with that new fling program yesterday and its a good start, but not there yet for most users.

It works as advertised, but there is no seeking/fast forwarding, all you get is play/pause/stop with a timer. So you can't skip forward or resume later, you always have to start playing from the beginning. It also has problems with widescreen videos where instead of having the video centered with black bars on top and bottom, it just displays the video from top and all blackness on bottom. Also, when you finish watching something, it doesn't stop and return to the ready to cast logo, it just stays there with black screen until you stop it or another device tries to stream something. All these problems will be fixed eventually, and hopefully be powerful like what ps3 media server is currently.

Speaking of ps3, which is my main streamer, I can confirm that chromecast does not support cinavia because I just watched that new man of silver R6 release and it went thur ok while my ps3 got denied. Hopefully the author of fling will bundle his program with ffmpeg and memcoder to make it a all in one solution. Lastly, I just realize how little codec chromecast supports. The only thing it plays natively is avc video and aac/mp3 for audio in a mp4 container while the rest of the world uses mkv container with avc+dts/ac3 combo. Luckily it was easy to change my mkv movies/tv to mp4 and convert only audio to aac, worked good on most of the releases.

 

[drbrock]

And for Android devices, Koushik posted beta #3 for Aircast on his G+ page.

How has it been working? I don't have a rooted phone. Note 2. Is it an issue playing 1080p content.
It would be awesome to take my chromecast to a friend's house and just download mkvs to my phone and stream to a TV. Carrying around the WDTV is a pain.

 

[vshah]

it's been working fine for me. streams 1080p without an issue. as long as your wifi can handle whatever bitrate the file is at, you should be fine.

if both the phone and the chromecast are far away from the access point and have weak signal - i can bet it wouldn't work too well.

 

[ponyo]

How has it been working? I don't have a rooted phone. Note 2. Is it an issue playing 1080p content.
It would be awesome to take my chromecast to a friend's house and just download mkvs to my phone and stream to a TV. Carrying around the WDTV is a pain.

You could just use MHL adapter and connect your Note 2 directly to the TV instead of carrying around WDTV. The MHL adapter is like $15 on Amazon.

 

[drbrock]

You could just use MHL adapter and connect your Note 2 directly to the TV instead of carrying around WDTV. The MHL adapter is like $15 on Amazon.

True I completely forgot about that. Will def check out. Then I don't have to worry about buffering.

 

[Red Storm]

How has it been working? I don't have a rooted phone. Note 2. Is it an issue playing 1080p content.
It would be awesome to take my chromecast to a friend's house and just download mkvs to my phone and stream to a TV. Carrying around the WDTV is a pain.

Don't need root, you just sideload the app.

 

[drbrock]

I have sideloaded apps before and this time it was not working. Thought it had to be rooted. Who knows... Might go the mhl route until they get this thing out of beta.

 

[dlock13]

CRAP! Wrong thread!

 

[Doppel]

Just got mine today from Amazon, ordered a few days after it came out.

I have played around with it for an hour so far.

Impressions so far:

- easy setup and very intuitive

- "tab-casting" (similar to Apple's Airplay, but just for the tab) is surprisingly weak. I expected better; certainly airplay from my iphone or ipad is far better; Airplay looks cleaner and it's extremely snappy even if there is a sub-second delay. But tab-casting on my laptop (I think the laptop runs about $700 right now to buy it) has more pixelation and the latency just while scrolling on a web page is very off-putting

- netflix and youtube apps work okay, but take a while to get loaded. Also when I went from a netflix app to youtube and tried to natively cast (using the chromecast's youtube app as opposed to mirroring the browser tab) it didn't restart properly until a page refresh

- mirroring a video that was playing in the chrome tab, similar to Wired's July article on torrents in Chromecast, was totally unusable. Frames dropped through the floor and it was crap

- Chromecast doesn't have a Hulu app but I was pleasantly surprised to see that i was able to mirror it just fine, full-screen

- all screen edges are cut off a small bit when mirroring. I haven't looked into the source of this further yet, though

- I use adblock (and I know you do, too), which means no ads on youtube, but only if played natively through the browser. That worked ok--performance was okay, but nonetheless the chromecast constantly tries to encourage you to use its app, which means you also are going to see the ads...

For $35 it appears a good device, even if it's only used for netflix in another TV room. I assume it will become more polished, but despite some issues that $35 price tag is damn low and I'm willing to be quite forgiving.

 

[Deeko]

I also just got mine from Amazon. Tabcasting was the reason I got it, and it actually works better than I expected based on what everyone has said. I mainly got it so I could stream my free Sunday ticket subscription to my tv, and it works swimmingly.

 

[bearxor]

After spending a lot of time with it now, I think it's finally convinced me to buy an Apple TV. I've always avoided one because I just didn't think it was worth it but I'm starting to. Hangs my mind. And since I basically use only iOS at home with no real computer usage, the Chromecast has been more or less a YouTube player. At least with an ATV I can do mirroring.

 

[dlock13]

The problem I have with the Chromecast is that I'm waiting for other apps/devs to take advantage of it. The tab functionality is basically meh. I can't use Amazon instant video at all, and there are a lot of shows on Amazon I watch compared to Netflix. It's really disappointing. It's a great device that's for sure, but it's pretty much going to sit in my drawer until I find a real good use for it.

 

[drbrock]

Yeah Google needs to allow the developers to release their ideas. Right now it is a Netflix player for me. Thing works great for those applications but other than that it has a lot to be desired. It is taking way too long for new programs to come on board.

 

[AzNKiD]

chromecast was cool when I was able to stream local video with fling, but now that google killed that, I dont have real much use for it anymore until they release the sdk. I dont care about netflix, only got it because its free. for all you guys that was disappointed by google's decisions to stop local stream, go here to stick it to the man, http://www.r??????.com/r/fullmoviesonyoutube/ . I wont give you the full url, but I am pretty sure you can guess what it is. Its pretty funny just loading youtube links from there where I previously would have no interest in watching any of those content in the first place.

 

[Doppel]

After spending a lot of time with it now, I think it's finally convinced me to buy an Apple TV. I've always avoided one because I just didn't think it was worth it but I'm starting to. Hangs my mind. And since I basically use only iOS at home with no real computer usage, the Chromecast has been more or less a YouTube player. At least with an ATV I can do mirroring.

You should know that apple airplay is not nearly as useful as it may seem. It slows your device down a little bit and in many cases it does not mirror your screen--rather, your device ends up being a remote for the appletv native app in the exact same way chrome set is.

AirPlay mirroring has MUCH less lag and MUCH higher picture quality than chromecast mirroring but, although the latter only works within chrome, it can be set to mirror absolutely everything in chrome. IOS devices are often hamstrung whereas Chrome is not. Case in point you cannot watch Hulu on iOS without Hulu plus but you can through chrome.

 

[bearxor]

You should know that apple airplay is not nearly as useful as it may seem. It slows your device down a little bit and in many cases it does not mirror your screen--rather, your device ends up being a remote for the appletv native app in the exact same way chrome set is.

AirPlay mirroring has MUCH less lag and MUCH higher picture quality than chromecast mirroring but, although the latter only works within chrome, it can be set to mirror absolutely everything in chrome. IOS devices are often hamstrung whereas Chrome is not. Case in point you cannot watch Hulu on iOS without Hulu plus but you can through chrome.

I think you missed this part:

And since I basically use only iOS at home with no real computer usage

I can count the number of minutes I spend on a computer at home per week on one hand (it's usually zero).

Having said that, though, I'm still enjoying it as a Youtube remote. The real problem comes when I'm browsing /r/videos and there's things on other sites like liveleak or something. I'm sure Google will build in casting throughout most of Android in the next year or so, not relying on individual apps to support it, but that won't really help if you're in the iOS ecosystem.

 

[drbrock]

Has any of the Roms incorporated a great use for Chromecast. I am borderline willing to change from stock to have better functionality with chromecast. My goal is to take videos off my SD card and play them on my tv. I don't want an hdmi cable because on the note 2 it requires it to be plugged in which I don't have another outlet to use. My PC and TV setup are all on one two port plug...

 

[Red Storm]

Has any of the Roms incorporated a great use for Chromecast. I am borderline willing to change from stock to have better functionality with chromecast. My goal is to take videos off my SD card and play them on my tv. I don't want an hdmi cable because on the note 2 it requires it to be plugged in which I don't have another outlet to use. My PC and TV setup are all on one two port plug...

Your PC can't power the phone while it's plugged in?