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Introducing Google Cast for audio

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Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#31

Post by dchuk »

I love my Chromecasts. I have two of them in our house, and we don't have a television subscription, we just use a mixture of Plex, Netflix, and streams for sports. We're saving a bunch of money every year now, and it works great.

But damn, the lack of a desktop sdk/api for chromecast is just infuriating. I get it, Google believes in Mobile and Web only, but you'd think if they're shooting for market domination, they wouldn't ignore an entire market segment in terms of developer options.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#32

Post by commandar »

_lce0 wrote: post #15

I don't want to cast from the cloud . Just make the device able to receive any media from my LAN!! it's nice that the dongle can stream from the web, but it's way more useful to make the device aware of upnp/dlna devices over my local network. Because of this I've moved to raspberry which - exposes itself over the network as a upnp device - plays remote media in the main TV - acts as a nas, it can stream to kids' roo…

>Plus it's a fully Linux environment that I can fine tune as desired

You are not the Chromecast's target audience.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#33

Post by Shog9 »

_lce0 wrote: post #23
Reebles wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually many apps that allow you to play local content now. It was pretty bad for a while before they released the SDK though. The two I use are Videostream for Google Chrome, and BubbleUPnP for Android.

Have you seen which permissions those kind of apps require? I don't want to allow these apps to read my history, share my contacts, or expose the current running apps just to cast some media ..

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.findsdk.ap...

I won't even run the Facebook or LinkedIn apps without locking them down first. Frankly, it's somewhat negligent that this isn't built into the Play Store installation UI.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#34

Post by dragonwriter »

andybak wrote: post #25
_lce0 wrote: post #15

I don't want to cast from the cloud . Just make the device able to receive any media from my LAN!! it's nice that the dongle can stream from the web, but it's way more useful to make the device aware of upnp/dlna devices over my local network. Because of this I've moved to raspberry which - exposes itself over the network as a upnp device - plays remote media in the main TV - acts as a nas, it can stream to kids' roo…

> I don't want to cast from the cloud. It certainly helps battery life for your mobile device to step aside as soon as playback has started. When casting video it doesn't matter even if I turn the device off.

Its possible to have things on your LAN other than mobile devices.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#35

Post by acgourley »

ultrafez wrote: post #26
acgourley wrote: post #19

Note the lack of spotify support. It's turning into a bit of a showdown between players like google cast and spotify connect. There will definitely be a small market in building devices which can serve as bridges between the standards.

It's disappointing that we are in the situation where we have several competing protocols for streaming audio - Google Cast, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, UPnP/DLNA. As a society we are capable of making software and hardware that interoperate among manufacturers - email and HTTP are good examples. We could be a far more technologically advanced world if capitalism didn't encourage companies to create competing closed-so…

To be fair, the existing UPnP/DLNA standard really wasn't good enough. For example, AirPlay just added wifi direct connections between devices which is a requirement for good streaming video.

On balance I believe it's a net positive to have some competing standards for a while as we figure out what works best. I do hope we can arrive at some interoperable standards, or we can at least mitigate the spread via low cost adapter devices.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#36

Post by matthewmacleod »

JoelSutherland wrote: post #14
dlevine wrote: post #2

So Google has decided to compete with Airplay. Although I guess this is better, because I'm assuming it will work with any router, and not just special ones sold by Apple.

It's actually more like Sonos. Airplay streams from the device to the receiver. With this (and Sonos) a command is sent to the device which does the streaming on its own.

I'm not sure that's totally accurate – I think AirPlay has multiple modes of operation, including the ability to stream directly from a third device.

I don't remember the details of this off the top of my head.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#37

Post by pat2man »

dlevine wrote: post #2

So Google has decided to compete with Airplay. Although I guess this is better, because I'm assuming it will work with any router, and not just special ones sold by Apple.

Even better I bet speaker manufacturers will ship both and basically your speaker will "just work" regardless of what platform you are using.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#38

Post by nightski »

ultrafez wrote: post #26
acgourley wrote: post #19

Note the lack of spotify support. It's turning into a bit of a showdown between players like google cast and spotify connect. There will definitely be a small market in building devices which can serve as bridges between the standards.

It's disappointing that we are in the situation where we have several competing protocols for streaming audio - Google Cast, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, UPnP/DLNA. As a society we are capable of making software and hardware that interoperate among manufacturers - email and HTTP are good examples. We could be a far more technologically advanced world if capitalism didn't encourage companies to create competing closed-so…

Yes but if everyone agreed on a standard I could see us all complaining that "we could be far more technologically advanced world if we didn't force everyone to use the same standard and there was more room for innovation and competition".

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#39

Post by [deleted] »

_lce0 wrote: post #15

I don't want to cast from the cloud . Just make the device able to receive any media from my LAN!! it's nice that the dongle can stream from the web, but it's way more useful to make the device aware of upnp/dlna devices over my local network. Because of this I've moved to raspberry which - exposes itself over the network as a upnp device - plays remote media in the main TV - acts as a nas, it can stream to kids' roo…

[deleted]
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