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The rebranding makes sense, because I don't think people see it as "Google Chromecast", but simply "Chromecast" and not associating it with Google.
Google has a really horrible brand reputation though. Would be bizarre if someone at Google thought tacking "Google" on a product would improve the product's reputation.
They’ve been getting more sluggish for years. When the Ultra launched I could stream something to the TV from my laptop or phone nearly instantly. Now it’s a 20 second wait and only 80% chance of success. Why the fuck can’t products by Google improve performance over time? What perverse incentives do they have to slowly and steadily make them worse than they were out of the box?
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For reference, an Apple TV 4K costs $129.
That premium gets you a pretty beefy processor at least, the same one found on the iPhone 13. I doubt the SoC Google is using will be even close to that.
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the phone/browser lock-in is largely due to lack of a standardized and open protocol to stream content in this manner. in the wireless-display-sharing ecosystem the chromecast is unique in that, when possible, it streams content from the original provider on a local client rather than relying on mirroring your device's display. this gives a better user experience but required participation from each service provider.…
> amazon hasn't tried to create a standardized protocol Amazon is pushing Matter Cast, which is in many ways superior to Google Cast, most of all by being open. Its biggest downside is that it's not supported by anyone else.
Didn't Chromecasts work with DIAL which was an open protocol?
https://www.dial-multiscreen.org/dial/protocol-specification
How much of this is an "end" to Chromecast and a rebranding of Chromecast to "Google TV Streamer"? It seems like the bare-bones experience of a Chromecast being tied to a phone (or browser) is getting replaced with an Apple TV like experience. If this is the case, it might be a (rare) example of a good branding shift from Google. I have had two Chromecasts (the original and an Ultra) and I feel like both were hampere…
The 4K Chromecast "with Google TV" basically was that already, since it has the full-screen menu-based interface and remote. It seems a bit silly to me that they're tossing the brand aside but maybe they're doing that for exactly this reason.
I finally replaced it about a month ago with an onn streaming box from Walmart for about 20 bucks--less than I paid for the original Chromecast a decade ago:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/onn-Google-TV-4K-Streaming-Box-Ne...
Works great, and still has Chromecast support. Most of the stuff I used to cast can be handled by Google TV having equivalent Android apps now, but I still like casting my local music from my phone to the TV when I'm reading. There's a $50 4K version out now, as well, if you have a higher resolution TV, but the TV I had the Chromecast plugged into caps out at 1080P, so, no need.
So they are ending Chromecast, and also just launched the "Google TV Streamer" which seems to do the same thing, but "faster, more premium" whatever that means. Seems to be a reason to charge people more for the same thing but slap the AI label all over it. But that's just first impressions. Edit: and apparently the TV Streamer thing is twice the price of the Chromecast.
Wow, even for Google, this seems like an exceptionally well-liked and popular brand name and device to kill. The replacement ("Google TV streamer") seems to be a quite different device – most importantly, one that will be very visible next to a TV, and not out of sight behind it like its predecessor. For anyone not particularly interested in having "AI" in their streaming stick (and this being Google, surely that wil…