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Chromium is no longer supported for Chromecast

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Re: Chromium is no longer supported for Chromecast

#21

Post by throwaway2048 »

petre wrote: post #15
gcb0 wrote: post #10

People really have any expectation from Google devices? Even android which whole marketing is that it is "more open" only receives self-serving features. Btw, the access to chrome-cast is baked in the playStore service. So your app has to be compiled with full google play store tracking library to use it. ...i used to help maintain a version of fenec (firefox for android) that was build without chromecast support jus…

Just remove their commit rights or fork the project.

Google runs the chromium project.

Re: Chromium is no longer supported for Chromecast

#22

Post by fulafel »

gcb0 wrote: post #10

People really have any expectation from Google devices? Even android which whole marketing is that it is "more open" only receives self-serving features. Btw, the access to chrome-cast is baked in the playStore service. So your app has to be compiled with full google play store tracking library to use it. ...i used to help maintain a version of fenec (firefox for android) that was build without chromecast support jus…

This is more about Google's desktop software (removing stuff from Chromium) than about Google's devices.

Re: Chromium is no longer supported for Chromecast

#23

Post by kevincox »

int_19h wrote: post #19
jeremydw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that speculation based on? Why wouldn't Google want more browsers to be able to Cast? My opinion: I feel like this is a pro-user move with an unfortunate side effect of breaking/unsupporting an extension. If I just want to cast to my TV why should I have to hunt for an extension. I'd rather it "just work" via a context menu in the browser.

It favors a particular implementation (Chromecast) in a market where there are several competing standards and no established leader. Shouldn't Miracast, for example, "just work" as well?

I don't know of any competing standards. The Matchstick tried but failed (I think they had DRM problems). Miracast is completely different, it deals with video to remove displays where as chromecast (primarily) is about loading a URL on a remote display with some communication primitives.

I really wish there was a competing product/standard, but I don't know of one.

Re: Chromium is no longer supported for Chromecast

#24

Post by ttflee »

gcb0 wrote: post #10

People really have any expectation from Google devices? Even android which whole marketing is that it is "more open" only receives self-serving features. Btw, the access to chrome-cast is baked in the playStore service. So your app has to be compiled with full google play store tracking library to use it. ...i used to help maintain a version of fenec (firefox for android) that was build without chromecast support jus…

I owned a Nexus One before it was stolen.

I waited for an upgrade to Android 4.0 but it never materialized.

Re: Chromium is no longer supported for Chromecast

#25

Post by josteink »

Usually I'm all for that everything made these days, should work across all browsers.

That said, the Chromecast was always named just that: Chrome-cast, after Google's proprietary browser. It was for instance not called the Web-cast. That's a pretty clear signal right there.

There's a thousand different browsers available to the curious user these days, but for years and years now the only (2?) browsers that have been supported was chrome and chromium.

Firefox for instance, has never received support. A big fuck you to what at the time was 25% of all internet users. The "fix"? Tell people to move to chrome (and how is Chrome's market share these days?).

This change just brings the amount of supported browsers down from 2 to 1 and the amount of unsupported browsers up from 998 to 999. Hardly a big change if you think about it.

Now... You have a proprietary browser, running proprietary nonstandard extensions to interact with proprietary online services and give them preferential treatment...

That's way beyond anything Microsoft did in the 90s to get the famous MSIE antitrust conviction.

How come Google gets off scot free?

Re: Chromium is no longer supported for Chromecast

#26

Post by wildmusings »

jeremydw wrote: post #13
Sylos wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you could cast with the Google Cast extension over Chromium. And it's generally believed that Google moved the Chromecast-functionality into Chrome and away from an extension to not necessarily lock out Chromium, but rather to lock out other Chromium-based browsers which could use their extensions, so for example Opera. Firefox and, I believe, Edge are also getting support for Chrome extensions in the foreseeab…

What is that speculation based on? Why wouldn't Google want more browsers to be able to Cast? My opinion: I feel like this is a pro-user move with an unfortunate side effect of breaking/unsupporting an extension. If I just want to cast to my TV why should I have to hunt for an extension. I'd rather it "just work" via a context menu in the browser.

>What is that speculation based on? Why wouldn't Google want more browsers to be able to Cast?

You have to remember how Google's business works. Ads on search is a massive part (majority?) of their revenue. The main reason for Chrome existing is to direct people to Google search via the address bar.

Re: Chromium is no longer supported for Chromecast

#27

Post by DiabloD3 »

int_19h wrote: post #19
jeremydw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that speculation based on? Why wouldn't Google want more browsers to be able to Cast? My opinion: I feel like this is a pro-user move with an unfortunate side effect of breaking/unsupporting an extension. If I just want to cast to my TV why should I have to hunt for an extension. I'd rather it "just work" via a context menu in the browser.

It favors a particular implementation (Chromecast) in a market where there are several competing standards and no established leader. Shouldn't Miracast, for example, "just work" as well?

Miracast is a streaming endpoint. As in, you typically throw H264+AAC at it.

Chromecast, however, is amount remote controlling a secondary Chrome HTML canvas on the Chromecast, where the intended use is manipulating a object.

You can cast a tab to your Chromecast, thus treating it like Miracast, but that is largely not what the Chromecast is meant for.

Example, I can have Youtube (the website or the phone app) cast a queue of videos to the Chromecast, interact with that queue from multiple devices, and even disconnect all devices, and the Chromecast keeps playing because it streams the video directly from Youtube, not my phone or browser.

Miracast cannot do any of these things.

In addition, the only functioning Miracast device I've ever discovered is Microsoft's Wireless Display Adapter. All the built in Miracast end point impls in TVs and such are utter garbage and usually don't work.

Re: Chromium is no longer supported for Chromecast

#28

Post by jptman »

I wonder if this has anything to do with the rumoured 4k Chromecast. I wouldn't be surprised if they have some interesting tech to support it they don't want to make public.

Edit: Nevermind, it looks like Chrome lately has built-in support for Chromecast (I see it under the menu as Cast). From this, I can surmise a couple of things:

1. Google wants users to be able to use a chromecast out of the box without installing an extension. Can't fault them for that because believe it or not, not everyone knows how to do that. Or there's some limitation I don't know about in extensions that they want to get around.

2. This means that Google would either have to open-source the Chromecast functionality in the browser, or it has to maintain both the functionality baked into Chrome and the browser extension. So, they'd have to keep supporting a browser extension they'd not need for Chrome just to support Chromium.

I don't know.. May be a good compromise if possible would've been to bundle Chrome with the chromecast extension. But I doubt when someone came up with the idea of bundling Chromecast in the browser for purpose X, someone else in the team said: But think of Chromium!

Re: Chromium is no longer supported for Chromecast

#29

Post by yincrash »

Sylos wrote: post #11
DrAwesome wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a Chromecast set up, so I'm not 100% sure on this, but my understanding is that Chromium users could cast using the Google Cast extension, and that Google did something (intentionally or unintentionally) to break the Cast extension and didn't fix it because casting is built into directly into Chrome now.

Yeah, you could cast with the Google Cast extension over Chromium. And it's generally believed that Google moved the Chromecast-functionality into Chrome and away from an extension to not necessarily lock out Chromium, but rather to lock out other Chromium-based browsers which could use their extensions, so for example Opera. Firefox and, I believe, Edge are also getting support for Chrome extensions in the foreseeab…

Given that there is a support article on how to make Chrome use the cast extension by disabling the media router functionality, this seems unlikely.

https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6349849?hl=en

Re: Chromium is no longer supported for Chromecast

#30

Post by zx2c4 »

I'm on my phone right now, and just skimmed that thread for about 10 seconds, but it reminded me of a commit I saw a few days ago when skimming another page for 10 seconds. All that skimming appears to be paying off. Maybe Batman is a skimmer too...

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/2962c9c21ab...

The original poster appears to be hit by a bug that was fixed by this commit, which is a part of the latest Chromium release. Just a bug that was fixed... no controversy.

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