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Introducing Google Cast for audio

chrome.blogspot.com

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Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#114
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 have my own Plex server with a couple Chromecasts hooked up throughout my apartment (two televisions and one connected to an HDMI port on my stereo for audio-only). It works fantastically well, allowing me to switch where things play-back as I move from room to room. And, like you said, it's linux, so I can do what needs to be done in regards to automating / organizing my media collection.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds really neat--any information on your product you can share?

Will do! I'm finishing up the design right now, and I plan to go DIY first anyways in order to get some quick feedback, circumvent expensive EMI certification, and to sell some units before having to go into case manufacturing. As soon as the prototype shows it's working at the quality level I hope it will, we'll start marketing it, and I'll make sure to drop you a note right then!

This is really cool! I've looked far and wide for got a good stereo amplifier that is customizable, but such things don't seem to exist! Please let us know more!

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#116

I use an Airport Express as an AirPlay receiver, which is connected to a line input on my Sonos setup. Nice thing is that Sonos can switch to that input automatically when it senses a signal. I've also used Shairport[0] on a Raspberry Pi as an AirPlay receiver - it worked great, I just wanted to keep tinkering with the Pi so I switched to the Airport Express, which I already owned. [0]: https://github.com/hendrikw82/…

Thing is if you have a Sonos already, then you have had music casting from Google for a while. It's not the same protocol, but the Google Play Music app has been able to "cast" to Sonos for at least some months, maybe a year or more.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A local network is more than capable of serving up the chromecast app. It's a restriction they've added to the device that it won't load it from a local network.

I think "restriction" is a poor choice: it's more like an architectural decision - that is exactly how they designed it. I could equally say your computer is more than capable of running a self-hosted version of GMail, but "it's a restriction [Google] added" for them to run it on their servers.

I run a Plex media server on my laptop, which is already serving up content to my local network over http. It would be very simple for them to host their Chromecast app on the same local server and for the cast button to send that URL.

The Chromecast checks the URLs against a whitelist. Presumably as a security measure, which is a perfectly valid reason, but it's still a "restriction".

To allow people to run a self-hosted GMail, huge changes would need to be made to the code. To allow me to serve my own Chromecast apps, it would need to remove a whitelist check.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#118

Any support for multi-room audio? (or multiple remote speakers?) Sonos seem to be the only ones with a handle on this, and even then it's not particularly low latency...

If you use SonosNet rather than your standard wifi network, it has much better latency.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#120

>"Google Cast streams your music directly from the cloud instead of from your phone, so you won’t lose any sound quality." Huh??? This is almost _never_ the case in my opinion, especially when using popular cloud services for music playback. Pretty sure I just had to nerf a high quality .WAV file to a .WMV 20 minutes ago before I could even upload it to google music.

.wav is not a music format. It's meant for pure sound clips and doesn't even have the capability of adding metadata like artist and song name. If you care about sound quality then just use FLAC.

The streaming quality from Google Music is top notch, it just seems that you had a problem getting the music into the service due to an antiquated format.

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