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- May 10, 2013
So we've all seen the Google Chromecast joint, that is helping to make cable obsolete....
but when I randomly just clicked on the Youtube app on my PS3, I really realized that I have absolutely no use for cable. I can really sit and watch whatever I want on my TV in stunning HD video, its beautiful
Am I late? Has it always been this dope?
I'm sitting here and watching Super Bowl XLIII in my living room, been watching animal videos, M5 races, all that good ****
Youtube on my PS3 has made cable absolutely useless and obsolete.
but when I randomly just clicked on the Youtube app on my PS3, I really realized that I have absolutely no use for cable. I can really sit and watch whatever I want on my TV in stunning HD video, its beautiful
Am I late? Has it always been this dope?
I'm sitting here and watching Super Bowl XLIII in my living room, been watching animal videos, M5 races, all that good ****
Youtube on my PS3 has made cable absolutely useless and obsolete.
The good: The Google Chromecast is a dirt-cheap wireless video dongle that streams Netflix and YouTube to your TV using Android or iOS tablets as remotes, with Android users also getting access to Google Music and Google TV and Movies. Its small size hides neatly behind your TV and makes it easy to take on-the-go.
The bad: The beta screen-mirroring feature won't work as well as you want it to, so you're largely limited to four apps and without support for several major ones, including Amazon Instant, HBO Go, MLB.TV, Spotify, and Rdio. The lack of a dedicated remote also means you always need a smartphone or tablet nearby.
The bottom line: Google's $35 Chromecast streaming-TV dongle is certainly cheap, but its limited initial app support and total reliance on mobile devices keep it well behind the Apple TV and Roku -- at least for now.
[article=""]
MSRP:$35.00LOW PRICE:$35.00Set price alert
If you've heard anything about Google's Chromecast, you've heard that it costs $35. Google seemingly picked the perfect price for its new sticklike streaming device, generating massive buzz and eliminating the usually rational process that occurs before clicking "add to cart."
The dongle is already sold out and back-ordered for weeks.
But once you've lived with the Chromecast for a while, $35 feels less like a fantastic deal and more like exactly what a device like this should cost. The Chromecast lets you stream from Netflix and YouTube using your Android or iOS mobile device as a remote, with Android users also getting access to Google Music and Google TV and Movies. It also supports the ability to mirror any content from a Chrome browser running on a Mac or Windows PC, including Hulu, HBO Go, and full episodes from major TV networks like CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC via their respective Web sites. And the hardware is delightfully compact and well-built, making it easy to toss in your bag for travel or moving from room to room.
What it doesn't do is everything else: there are no dedicated apps for many major services (including Amazon Instant, HBO Go, Spotify, Rdio, and MLB.TV), no dedicated TV interface for standalone use, no support for personal media sitting on your devices (aside from a clunky hack), and the awesome-sounding screen-mirroring feature ends up being entirely underwhelming in practice. Basically, you can stream Netflix, YouTube, and a couple of Google services; $35 feels about right.
The Chromecast is clearly Google's best living room device so far, almost entirely thanks to its impulse-worthy price. (Although note that Google's inclusion of a free three-month Netflix promotion is currently up in the air.) It doesn't challenge the Apple TV or Roku's boxes on merit, both of which remain much better options as your primary living room streamer. Chromecast has a lot of room to improve if more apps offer support, but at the moment it's best suited for people deep in the Google media ecosystem looking for a living room solution.
Design: A stick for streaming
The Chromecast hardware isn't anything special, but it has a reassuring, solid feel. It's a 2-inch adapter that's compact enough to occupy a spare HDMI input on your TV without blocking adjacent inputs. (If you have a particularly cramped back panel, Google generously includes an HDMI extender cable.) The black matte finish has enough of a texture to make it easily grippable, perfect for popping out the Chromecast and throwing it in your bag for travel. On the far end, there's a Micro-USB port, a small status light, and a tiny button you can use to reset the device to its factory default. In all, it's perfectly fine for a device designed to live behind your TV.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
The only "catch" is that the Chromecast requires power, a fact that's conspicuously missing from all of Google's beauty shots. If your TV has a USB input, you can probably use that to power your Chromecast using the included cable. Google also includes a USB power adapter for TVs without USB, which means you'll have a wire dangling from the back of your TV to a power outlet. Ultimately, while it's not quite "just a dongle," it's still a very clean setup.
Setup: Up and running in minutes
Google touts the Chromecast setup as "plug and play," and that's not far off. Once you have the device plugged in, your TV will prompt you to visit the online setup using a laptop or smartphone, where you'll download the Chromecast setup app. The setup process takes a few minutes, and Google has done a great job of leading you step-by-step through the process with lots of helpful illustrations along the way.
(Credit: Google)
Behind the scenes, the Chromecast is creating its own local hot spot for the initial setup, but those technical details are all hidden. (The most arduous step is that you'll need to have your home Wi-Fi password handy.) If you're on a laptop, the final step is installing the Chromecast extension, then you're ready to go. It's easy to take the painless setup for granted, but Google deserves a lot of credit, especially considering how tough I found it to get the very similarPLAiR up and running.
Netflix, YouTube, Google Music, and Google TV and Movies
Once you're set up, you can use a smartphone or tablet to watch content from four sources: Netflix, YouTube, Google Music, and Google TV and Movies. (Google says Pandora is on the way.) In each of those apps, you simply press the "Cast" icon, select your Chromecast, and the video gets sent to your TV.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
That makes the Chromecast feel an awful lot like AirPlay, although it's different in a few important ways. The big one is that AirPlay is supported by a huge number of iOS apps, while the Chromecast is currently limited to four. (I expect that to increase over time, especially with the splash that the Chromecast's announcement made.)
[h4]A look at Google's Chromecast (pictures)[/h4]
1-2 of 21
Scroll LeftScroll Right
The other, more subtle distinction is that while AirPlay actually streams content from your device (and also works with locally stored content), the Chromecast is never truly streaming from your smartphone or tablet. For example, with YouTube, AirPlay streams from the cloud to your device, then to an Apple TV, while the Chromecast pulls content straight from the cloud. In practice, it doesn't make much of a difference, although surprisingly AirPlay feels more reliable, despite doing more technical gymnastics.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
After you get a video playing, your smartphone or tablet acts like a remote. You can pause content or use the scrubber at the bottom to skip forward or back. You can even adjust the volume using your device's hardware volume controls, although in my testing it only adjusts the Chromecast's internal volume, rather than the volume on your TV, so you'll still need your TV's remote around for master volume control. (I'll be testing with more TVs soon to verify how volume controls works on different sets.) Another perk is that any compatible device on the network can grab control of your Chromecast and can make adjustments.
Because it's streaming directly from the cloud, image quality from Netflix, YouTube, and Google TV and Movies was excellent -- as good as you'd expect from a more sizable streaming box. "Arrested Development" on Netflix looked as good as it does on my Roku 3, and high-quality content from YouTube like "Speakeasy with Paul F Tompkins" also looked great. You're not making any image quality compromises by streaming with a stick.
Before you tell it what to play, the Google Chromecast doesn't have much of its own user interface.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
By pushing all of the interaction to smartphones and tablets, one surprising result is that the Chromecast doesn't really have much of its own user interface. When you're not streaming, the Chromecast displays some pretty nature photos and status information, but you can't navigate to apps or select any content from your TV. In other words, there's no way to use the Chromecast as a "standalone" device -- you need to have a smartphone or tablet handy.
Screen mirroring: Not the panacea you've hoped for
The other way to get content to the Chomecast is by using the Chrome browser on a Windows PC, Mac, or even Google's own Chromebook Pixel. (Support for the other Chromebook models is said to be coming soon.) By using the Chromecast extension, you can mirror any tab on Chrome on your TV, including any video, music, or photos that works in your browser.
In my experience, screen mirroring is one of those features that sounds great (free Hulu on my TV!), but it's just clunky enough that you find yourself not using it that often in the real world. The Chromecast's mirroring feature is no different. It "works," but it's not a very satisfying experience.
Free Hulu works, but not well.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
The good news is that mirroring works with essentially any streaming video, albeit with a few seconds of lag. I tested free Hulu content, HBO Go, NBC, CBS, and Fox, all of which worked. The bad news is that limitations are obvious right away. Image quality ranges from mediocre to poor, mostly because Chrome is converting the video on the fly from your PC and sending it to the Chromecast. You're also going to run into occasional (and sometimes frequent) dropouts -- sometimes just audio, but sometimes the video pauses, too. And the feature itself isn't entirely stable, so expect the extension to crash sometimes with Google throwing a quirky "brain freeze" message up on your TV.
It's even harder to get excited about this functionality once you've become accustomed to the excellent dedicated apps available on other streaming devices. You can can watch HBO Go via a $50 Roku with flawless playback, solid image quality, and no need for a laptop.
Mirroring is much better suited for non-video content, like photos or a presentation, but keep in mind that it only broadcasts what's inside of a Chrome tab. That makes it less flexible than Apple's AirPlay mirroring, which can display your entire desktop.
What it doesn't do
Once you sober up from the initial thrill of getting a streaming stick for $35, you have to contend with the fact that there's an awful lot that the Chromecast doesn't do. There's essentially no support (at least official support) for your personal media -- photos, music, or video files that are residing on your phone, tablet, or laptop. It feels particularly frustrating that you can't even display photos from an Android phone. Or that there's no dedicated support for "casting" photos from Google's own Picasa photo service, for instance.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
The list of "missing" dedicated apps is long: Amazon Instant, HBO Go, Spotify, Rdio, MLB.TV, and Hulu Plus, just to start. And then there's the fact that you probably already have (at least) one device that streams Netflix and YouTube, so it doesn't feel like you're adding much with the Chromecast. Not to mention the fact that many newer smart TVs already allow you to use smartphones as YouTube and Netflix remotes by default.
Can it compete with the Apple TV and Roku?
The Chromecast's limited functionality means the short answer is no. The Apple TV and Roku 3 are unambiguously better devices, with more content, more flexibility, and are just plain better suited to everyday use in your living room. But they also cost over three times as much, so it's not exactly a fair comparison.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
The really troubling device for the Chromecast is the Roku LT ($50). Both are best suited for secondary TVs, but the Roku LT supports so many more services (including Amazon Instant, HBO Go, Spotify, Time Warner Cable, and MLB.TV), has a great user interface, and can also be controlled by both Android and iOS devices. You can view photos and listen to music stored on your phone using the Roku app, plus it even handles personal media files stored on a PC using the Plex app. It's not as compact, but the Roku LT is better in just about every other way and well worth the extra $15. (Roku lacks an official YouTube app, but the free Twonky app for Android and iOS lets you stream YouTube vids from those devices to the Roku -- and since you need one of them to use the Chromecast, too, it's really not that much of a knock.)
Conclusion: Good enough for $35, but best for people deep in the Google ecosystem
But all the comparisons to existing boxes miss part of what makes the Chromecast worth considering. If you prefer to store and purchase your content through Google's ecosystem for the tightest integration with your Android phone, your options for watching that content on your TV have been limited: a few buggy Google TV devices and the notoriously short-lived Nexus Q. The Chromecast finally gives Android users a reasonable way to watch and listen to their Google Music and Google TV and Movies content in the living room, without much of an additional investment.
For everyone else, the appeal totally comes down to price. If you're looking for a new tech toy, the Chromecast isn't bad at $35 and seems like a particularly nice travel companion, but anyone looking for a dedicated living room box will be better served by an Apple TV or Roku box.
With more streaming-service support, the Chromecast could get much more appealing. To that end, we'll update this review if and when those additional services and functionality improvements appear. In the meantime, the future of the device feels like it's in the hands of developers.
[/article]
The bad: The beta screen-mirroring feature won't work as well as you want it to, so you're largely limited to four apps and without support for several major ones, including Amazon Instant, HBO Go, MLB.TV, Spotify, and Rdio. The lack of a dedicated remote also means you always need a smartphone or tablet nearby.
The bottom line: Google's $35 Chromecast streaming-TV dongle is certainly cheap, but its limited initial app support and total reliance on mobile devices keep it well behind the Apple TV and Roku -- at least for now.
[article=""]
MSRP:$35.00LOW PRICE:$35.00Set price alert
If you've heard anything about Google's Chromecast, you've heard that it costs $35. Google seemingly picked the perfect price for its new sticklike streaming device, generating massive buzz and eliminating the usually rational process that occurs before clicking "add to cart."
The dongle is already sold out and back-ordered for weeks.
But once you've lived with the Chromecast for a while, $35 feels less like a fantastic deal and more like exactly what a device like this should cost. The Chromecast lets you stream from Netflix and YouTube using your Android or iOS mobile device as a remote, with Android users also getting access to Google Music and Google TV and Movies. It also supports the ability to mirror any content from a Chrome browser running on a Mac or Windows PC, including Hulu, HBO Go, and full episodes from major TV networks like CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC via their respective Web sites. And the hardware is delightfully compact and well-built, making it easy to toss in your bag for travel or moving from room to room.
What it doesn't do is everything else: there are no dedicated apps for many major services (including Amazon Instant, HBO Go, Spotify, Rdio, and MLB.TV), no dedicated TV interface for standalone use, no support for personal media sitting on your devices (aside from a clunky hack), and the awesome-sounding screen-mirroring feature ends up being entirely underwhelming in practice. Basically, you can stream Netflix, YouTube, and a couple of Google services; $35 feels about right.
The Chromecast is clearly Google's best living room device so far, almost entirely thanks to its impulse-worthy price. (Although note that Google's inclusion of a free three-month Netflix promotion is currently up in the air.) It doesn't challenge the Apple TV or Roku's boxes on merit, both of which remain much better options as your primary living room streamer. Chromecast has a lot of room to improve if more apps offer support, but at the moment it's best suited for people deep in the Google media ecosystem looking for a living room solution.
Design: A stick for streaming
The Chromecast hardware isn't anything special, but it has a reassuring, solid feel. It's a 2-inch adapter that's compact enough to occupy a spare HDMI input on your TV without blocking adjacent inputs. (If you have a particularly cramped back panel, Google generously includes an HDMI extender cable.) The black matte finish has enough of a texture to make it easily grippable, perfect for popping out the Chromecast and throwing it in your bag for travel. On the far end, there's a Micro-USB port, a small status light, and a tiny button you can use to reset the device to its factory default. In all, it's perfectly fine for a device designed to live behind your TV.
The only "catch" is that the Chromecast requires power, a fact that's conspicuously missing from all of Google's beauty shots. If your TV has a USB input, you can probably use that to power your Chromecast using the included cable. Google also includes a USB power adapter for TVs without USB, which means you'll have a wire dangling from the back of your TV to a power outlet. Ultimately, while it's not quite "just a dongle," it's still a very clean setup.
Setup: Up and running in minutes
Google touts the Chromecast setup as "plug and play," and that's not far off. Once you have the device plugged in, your TV will prompt you to visit the online setup using a laptop or smartphone, where you'll download the Chromecast setup app. The setup process takes a few minutes, and Google has done a great job of leading you step-by-step through the process with lots of helpful illustrations along the way.
Behind the scenes, the Chromecast is creating its own local hot spot for the initial setup, but those technical details are all hidden. (The most arduous step is that you'll need to have your home Wi-Fi password handy.) If you're on a laptop, the final step is installing the Chromecast extension, then you're ready to go. It's easy to take the painless setup for granted, but Google deserves a lot of credit, especially considering how tough I found it to get the very similarPLAiR up and running.
Netflix, YouTube, Google Music, and Google TV and Movies
Once you're set up, you can use a smartphone or tablet to watch content from four sources: Netflix, YouTube, Google Music, and Google TV and Movies. (Google says Pandora is on the way.) In each of those apps, you simply press the "Cast" icon, select your Chromecast, and the video gets sent to your TV.
That makes the Chromecast feel an awful lot like AirPlay, although it's different in a few important ways. The big one is that AirPlay is supported by a huge number of iOS apps, while the Chromecast is currently limited to four. (I expect that to increase over time, especially with the splash that the Chromecast's announcement made.)
[h4]A look at Google's Chromecast (pictures)[/h4]
1-2 of 21
Scroll LeftScroll Right
The other, more subtle distinction is that while AirPlay actually streams content from your device (and also works with locally stored content), the Chromecast is never truly streaming from your smartphone or tablet. For example, with YouTube, AirPlay streams from the cloud to your device, then to an Apple TV, while the Chromecast pulls content straight from the cloud. In practice, it doesn't make much of a difference, although surprisingly AirPlay feels more reliable, despite doing more technical gymnastics.
After you get a video playing, your smartphone or tablet acts like a remote. You can pause content or use the scrubber at the bottom to skip forward or back. You can even adjust the volume using your device's hardware volume controls, although in my testing it only adjusts the Chromecast's internal volume, rather than the volume on your TV, so you'll still need your TV's remote around for master volume control. (I'll be testing with more TVs soon to verify how volume controls works on different sets.) Another perk is that any compatible device on the network can grab control of your Chromecast and can make adjustments.
Because it's streaming directly from the cloud, image quality from Netflix, YouTube, and Google TV and Movies was excellent -- as good as you'd expect from a more sizable streaming box. "Arrested Development" on Netflix looked as good as it does on my Roku 3, and high-quality content from YouTube like "Speakeasy with Paul F Tompkins" also looked great. You're not making any image quality compromises by streaming with a stick.
Before you tell it what to play, the Google Chromecast doesn't have much of its own user interface.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
By pushing all of the interaction to smartphones and tablets, one surprising result is that the Chromecast doesn't really have much of its own user interface. When you're not streaming, the Chromecast displays some pretty nature photos and status information, but you can't navigate to apps or select any content from your TV. In other words, there's no way to use the Chromecast as a "standalone" device -- you need to have a smartphone or tablet handy.
Screen mirroring: Not the panacea you've hoped for
The other way to get content to the Chomecast is by using the Chrome browser on a Windows PC, Mac, or even Google's own Chromebook Pixel. (Support for the other Chromebook models is said to be coming soon.) By using the Chromecast extension, you can mirror any tab on Chrome on your TV, including any video, music, or photos that works in your browser.
In my experience, screen mirroring is one of those features that sounds great (free Hulu on my TV!), but it's just clunky enough that you find yourself not using it that often in the real world. The Chromecast's mirroring feature is no different. It "works," but it's not a very satisfying experience.
Free Hulu works, but not well.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
The good news is that mirroring works with essentially any streaming video, albeit with a few seconds of lag. I tested free Hulu content, HBO Go, NBC, CBS, and Fox, all of which worked. The bad news is that limitations are obvious right away. Image quality ranges from mediocre to poor, mostly because Chrome is converting the video on the fly from your PC and sending it to the Chromecast. You're also going to run into occasional (and sometimes frequent) dropouts -- sometimes just audio, but sometimes the video pauses, too. And the feature itself isn't entirely stable, so expect the extension to crash sometimes with Google throwing a quirky "brain freeze" message up on your TV.
It's even harder to get excited about this functionality once you've become accustomed to the excellent dedicated apps available on other streaming devices. You can can watch HBO Go via a $50 Roku with flawless playback, solid image quality, and no need for a laptop.
Mirroring is much better suited for non-video content, like photos or a presentation, but keep in mind that it only broadcasts what's inside of a Chrome tab. That makes it less flexible than Apple's AirPlay mirroring, which can display your entire desktop.
What it doesn't do
Once you sober up from the initial thrill of getting a streaming stick for $35, you have to contend with the fact that there's an awful lot that the Chromecast doesn't do. There's essentially no support (at least official support) for your personal media -- photos, music, or video files that are residing on your phone, tablet, or laptop. It feels particularly frustrating that you can't even display photos from an Android phone. Or that there's no dedicated support for "casting" photos from Google's own Picasa photo service, for instance.
The list of "missing" dedicated apps is long: Amazon Instant, HBO Go, Spotify, Rdio, MLB.TV, and Hulu Plus, just to start. And then there's the fact that you probably already have (at least) one device that streams Netflix and YouTube, so it doesn't feel like you're adding much with the Chromecast. Not to mention the fact that many newer smart TVs already allow you to use smartphones as YouTube and Netflix remotes by default.
Can it compete with the Apple TV and Roku?
The Chromecast's limited functionality means the short answer is no. The Apple TV and Roku 3 are unambiguously better devices, with more content, more flexibility, and are just plain better suited to everyday use in your living room. But they also cost over three times as much, so it's not exactly a fair comparison.
The really troubling device for the Chromecast is the Roku LT ($50). Both are best suited for secondary TVs, but the Roku LT supports so many more services (including Amazon Instant, HBO Go, Spotify, Time Warner Cable, and MLB.TV), has a great user interface, and can also be controlled by both Android and iOS devices. You can view photos and listen to music stored on your phone using the Roku app, plus it even handles personal media files stored on a PC using the Plex app. It's not as compact, but the Roku LT is better in just about every other way and well worth the extra $15. (Roku lacks an official YouTube app, but the free Twonky app for Android and iOS lets you stream YouTube vids from those devices to the Roku -- and since you need one of them to use the Chromecast, too, it's really not that much of a knock.)
Conclusion: Good enough for $35, but best for people deep in the Google ecosystem
But all the comparisons to existing boxes miss part of what makes the Chromecast worth considering. If you prefer to store and purchase your content through Google's ecosystem for the tightest integration with your Android phone, your options for watching that content on your TV have been limited: a few buggy Google TV devices and the notoriously short-lived Nexus Q. The Chromecast finally gives Android users a reasonable way to watch and listen to their Google Music and Google TV and Movies content in the living room, without much of an additional investment.
For everyone else, the appeal totally comes down to price. If you're looking for a new tech toy, the Chromecast isn't bad at $35 and seems like a particularly nice travel companion, but anyone looking for a dedicated living room box will be better served by an Apple TV or Roku box.
With more streaming-service support, the Chromecast could get much more appealing. To that end, we'll update this review if and when those additional services and functionality improvements appear. In the meantime, the future of the device feels like it's in the hands of developers.
[/article]
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