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Introducing Google Cast for audio

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141–150 of 172 posts

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#141
post #89

"Google Cast is designed to give you more freedom while listening to music." I sense some irony in this statement.

It almost makes AirPlay open by comparison. At least that lets you stream your local music collection rather than restricting you to approved cloud music services.

I've had good experiences with Plex for local media. And anything you can put in a Chrome tab you can cast to the device.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#142
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You know, UPnP has media renderers, servers and control software as three separate matters. This is already a solved problem. And, well, I had controlled mpd running on my desktop machine (that has the speakers connected) and streaming from my NAS from my N900, like, 5 years ago. Replace desktop with something like rPI and the tech is here.

UPnP and DLNA are a disaster of incompatibility and terrible usability. I've tried to use various UPnP/DLNA audio streaming hardware for almost 10 years and they have all had terrible issues. Most required the device controlling streaming to always be on, which is terrible for battery life and plain broken on tablets, etc. that go to sleep. Some only worked with Windows 7 media player's 'play to' command. I had to go through crazy setups like running multiple different UPnP services (bubble UPnP) just to make virtual UPnP devices that fixed bugs in my real UPnP devices, and even then things would mysteriously stop working.

Stay very, very far away from UPnP/DLNA. It's borderline false advertising IMHO to claim it streams music.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#143

Very nice. I'm right now sitting in front of a schematics of a nice modern modular stereo hi-fi amplifier that I'm building. I made sure to leave plenty of internal interconnects for BTO radio modules, so that I could accomodate for Bluetooth, DAB, UPnP rendering, TI CC8520 or whatever wireless standard would be coming my way later down the line. Seems that I can now plan to add a Google Cast radio module that can be…

Is there any indication they're going to sell Cast radio compatible chips to end users? I seriously doubt you could get one without signing NDAs, etc.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, UPnP has media renderers, servers and control software as three separate matters. This is already a solved problem. And, well, I had controlled mpd running on my desktop machine (that has the speakers connected) and streaming from my NAS from my N900, like, 5 years ago. Replace desktop with something like rPI and the tech is here.

UPnP and DLNA are a disaster of incompatibility and terrible usability. I've tried to use various UPnP/DLNA audio streaming hardware for almost 10 years and they have all had terrible issues. Most required the device controlling streaming to always be on, which is terrible for battery life and plain broken on tablets, etc. that go to sleep. Some only worked with Windows 7 media player's 'play to' command. I had to go…

if you're using android, i suggest you try bubbleupnp https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft.... It doesn't seem to have the problems you describe, and it's also very happy to send stuff to a chromecast instead of a DLNA renderer. I could see how it's possible that your renderer is the cause of the problems, and that can be harder to replace since it's probably embedded in your TV (I've only used chromecast and samsung TVs).

I've actually had little to no trouble with DLNA overall, using among other things the ReadyDLNA server for a sparc readynas and rygel on ubuntu. i suppose it only takes one bad implementation among the components in your setup to ruin the whole experience, but i've been pleasantly surprised over the years how well it seems to work.

bubble doesn't have the best UI, but it's not bad, and there are other apps that are prettier (allcast comes to mind). in the past i would have totally agreed that most upnp controllers i had used had TERRIBLE usability, but most of those were embedded in A/V equipment (TVs, receivers), and what A/V equipment have you ever used with a good UI?

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#146

Very nice. I'm right now sitting in front of a schematics of a nice modern modular stereo hi-fi amplifier that I'm building. I made sure to leave plenty of internal interconnects for BTO radio modules, so that I could accomodate for Bluetooth, DAB, UPnP rendering, TI CC8520 or whatever wireless standard would be coming my way later down the line. Seems that I can now plan to add a Google Cast radio module that can be…

Is there any indication they're going to sell Cast radio compatible chips to end users? I seriously doubt you could get one without signing NDAs, etc.

Don't care about NDAs as much. At least not as much as about cut tape availability at the usual distributors. I'm fine as long as I can buy 100 chips at mouser instead of buying an obscure reel in shenzen (as might be the case for hdmi transceivers btw). They mentioned a couple chip manufacturers in the announcement, so I'm hoping they will follow through with that, or at the least, make modules available.

The same has been going on for digital radio recently. Only silabs have decent chips at 10€ per piece in single quantities, the rest is all large modules and obsolete chips that are all "not recommended for new designs".

Same for Bluetooth. CSR is quite hard to reach, chips are NDAed, and chip programmers and documentation is hard to get by unless you go the aliexpress route. Then suddenly the modules are easier to place on my PCB than the chip, amazingly cheap, and even the programmers are available as knockoffs for 50 dollars instead of 800.

It sometimes feels unprofessional to seemingly tack random Chinese Lego blocks onto each other, but apparently that's how the industry runs. I've even stopped mocking huge Javascript libraries recently, in sheer appreciation of this realisation ;-)

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#147
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…

Eh, the lack of gigabit ethernet makes it a pretty poor NAS.

Don't get me wrong, I like the RPi, but you can spend $25 more and get a much better NAS board.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#148
post #53
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm that that little device no longer works. The old models worked without the VGA portion needing to be plugged in, however the new models shipping from China don't work unless the VGA unit is plugged into something, which basically defeats the purpose. I am now using this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DMZOUVK/ref=oh_aui_detai... which is working great.

can't reply deeper... this is for the Yamaha comment next to this: disable auto resolution. it usually fixes this.

> can't reply deeper

What's that all about, then?

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#149
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I tried this, the sound output was awful from the Pi itself and glitchy when using a USB DAC. Any problems with the audio in your experience?

I'm no audiophile. I'm happy streaming 320kbs spotify with my premium account to a $50 pair of logitech computer speakers. No complaints of audio quality from me. Nobody has ever said anything either.

Are you using a + model?

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#150
post #89

"Google Cast is designed to give you more freedom while listening to music." I sense some irony in this statement.

It almost makes AirPlay open by comparison. At least that lets you stream your local music collection rather than restricting you to approved cloud music services.

> At least that lets you stream your local music collection

What makes you assume that Google Cast wouldn't? You can stream your local video collection to a Chromecast.

In fact, how is it restricted at all? If it works like a Chromecast does, the SDK is open and anyone can write receiver apps to run on it. How much more open do you need it to be?

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