Google introduces Chromecast - 35 bucks?!?

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Brando

Picked one up for the bedroom. Have Google TV in the living room and have been looking for a cheap way to stream Netflix and YouTube from my Nexus 7 on bed.
They're also supposed to be building out HBOgo support which will allow me to drift off nightly to The Wire.

You should be able to do HBOGo from a laptop even now using the Chrome syncing gizmo.

[SuperChief]

Originally Posted by DaFace

You should be able to do HBOGo from a laptop even now using the Chrome syncing gizmo.

Care to elaborate?

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by SuperChief

Care to elaborate?

The stuff I've read online says you can play any HTML5 or Flash video. Just load up the page containing the video in Chrome and then hit the extension's button to send it to your TV.

I guess I'm not 100% sure that HBOGo uses those two tech types, though. If it uses Silverlight like Netflix, it'll need its own app.

[|Zach|]

35 bucks?

Yes.

In.

[siberian khatru]

That sounds great.

I love technology, and I love the way TV watching is rapidly evolving.

[KevB]

They killed the free 3 months of Netflix deal. Rumor going around is that anyone who ordered after 1 PM PST yesterday is out of luck (that would include me - ordered yesterday evening). Would Google really spoil the buzz on this product by doing this? Seems they'll upset a lot of people who ordered on the day the product was announced.

[007]

Originally Posted by KevB

They killed the free 3 months of Netflix deal. Rumor going around is that anyone who ordered after 1 PM PST yesterday is out of luck (that would include me - ordered yesterday evening). Would Google really spoil the buzz on this product by doing this? Seems they'll upset a lot of people who ordered on the day the product was announced.

I smell a lot of cancellations if they really did that. Thats messed up.

[SuperChief]

Originally Posted by Guru

I smell a lot of cancellations if they really did that. Thats messed up.

Jeebus. You'd think a company as smart as Google could predict the kind of fallout they're about to get from this sort of move. What are they thinking?

[DaFace]

Here's a pretty good comparison of this to the other popular options (game consoles, AppleTV, and Roku).

http://qz.com/107942/googles-chromec...dia-solutions/

[TinyEvel]

it basically makes your TV a monitor for your smartphone. Pretty smart. and it sold out already in hours. Google own YouTube. The easier they make it to watch Youtube on a device you already have in your hand (rather than turn on your game console and open the YT interface, etc.) the better it is for them. My father is 74. he watches netflix on his tablet but his neck gets tired. Now he can just bring up a movie he likes and watch it on his TV. Simple.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by TinyEvel

it basically makes your TV a monitor for your smartphone. Pretty smart. and it sold out already in hours. Google own YouTube. The easier they make it to watch Youtube on a device you already have in your hand (rather than turn on your game console and open the YT interface, etc.) the better it is for them. My father is 74. he watches netflix on his tablet but his neck gets tired. Now he can just bring up a movie he likes and watch it on his TV. Simple.

This is kind of accurate, but in function it's got one important difference: the video itself is being streamed directly to the Chromecast, so once it's started, you can keep doing whatever you want on your phone/tablet/laptop after you press play.

[TinyEvel]

Originally Posted by DaFace

This is kind of accurate, but in function it's got one important difference: the video itself is being streamed directly to the Chromecast, so once it's started, you can keep doing whatever you want on your phone/tablet/laptop after you press play.

That's pretty rad. I was at Google's L.A. office today (shameless namedrop) talking about doing some YouTube-based ideas for one of our clients and they were telling me about Chromecast. It's pretty kewl.

[mdchiefsfan]

So say I get NFL Sunday Ticket on mobile since I am getting Madden would this be able to stream the games from mobile to my TV?

[DaveNull]

Most likely not. It's not designed to take arbitrary content and display it on the TV from what I've read.

If this includes flash content, that's unique. I don't know about PS, but XBox doesn't do flash with it's onboard IE. Neither does iOS.

See above plus the fact that if $600 iPhone doesn't have the processing power to run flash then neither will this $35 dingus that's the size of a thumb drive.

What I think is completely ridiculous is that for all the pictures that makes this look like you can just plug in this doohicky into the HDMI port and be watching video, you still have to connect it to AC power through the USB port on the back of the Chromecast thingy.

What's the point of it being small if I've still got to string power from it to an already nearly full power strip that may or may not have room for the USB adapter?

I'll stick to my AppleTV that can play HBO Go, ESPN, Netflix, YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, my entire iTunes library, mirror what's on my Mac, mirror what's on my iPhone or iPad, and be controlled by an iPhone, Android, universal remote or the tiny remote that it came with.

It's a hundred bucks versus $35 and currently a lot more functional.

[HC_Chief]

Originally Posted by DaveNull

See above plus the fact that if $600 iPhone doesn't have the processing power to run flash then neither will this $35 dingus that's the size of a thumb drive.

It has less to do with "processing power" than Adobe's refusal to support mobile platforms. Adobe made a conscious decision with Flash Player; they set in motion its death. HTML 5 FTW.