Yeah, don’t buy Google tech. If it ain’t search, stay away from it.
And the only reason they care about search is it's what drives their advertising, which is their primary product.
Moments in Chromecast's history
221–230 of 609 posts
Re: Moments in Chromecast's history
#222How 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 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.…
> 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.
AirPlay has the same capabilities, I believe even in the original v1 version - back then only for Audio as it didn’t support video at all.
Re: Moments in Chromecast's history
#223Lots of shade here. The Chrome served to make dumb tvs smart. It did its job. It changed the world of TVs. We don't use it anymore because TVs are smart out of the box. Google could spend the next 20 years trying to service and repurpose these things or cut technical debt and move onto the next.
I have yet to meet the smart TV I didn't want to throw out the window.
Half the smart TVs out there have the exact same software as Chromecast to begin with, so not sure what everyone is complaining about.
Re: Moments in Chromecast's history
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
>the phone/browser lock-in is largely due to lack of a standardized and open protocol to stream content in this manner. I feel like the thing you are describing as lock-in is, in a critical sense, quite the opposite. It gave you the power to make a dumb TV into a versatile streaming system that's not locked down and beholden to Smart TV software.
I wouldn't say opposite. You're still choosing one company's platform.
Re: Moments in Chromecast's history
#225How 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.
> since it has the full-screen menu-based interface and remote
Most impotantly, it has ads!
Re: Moments in Chromecast's history
#226Re: Moments in Chromecast's history
#227was there ever any information (released by Google or other parties) as to why Google decided to remove the functionality to "Cast" *any* tab, and not a tab from a site that was whitelisted by Google?
who pressured Google to do this? or did they "pressure themselves" to do it?
the BEST feature of early Chromecasts was the ability to cast any video from any page. it was revelatory!
and then that feature was silently removed.
Re: Moments in Chromecast's history
#228well, they no longer produce the "display-only" Chromecast in favor of their "Google TV" sticks with Remote etc. Not that much of a shock here, the market moved on from simple wireless display dongles. Unfortunately no sign of Google Cast protocol being opened for general purpose use. Would be great to be able to run your own custom Receiver-device without needing a Google certificate...
Fun fact: There was a guy who managed to extract the keys out of one of the earlier Chromecasts. He eventually stopped working on (or at least posting on XDA about) it because he was hired by Google. There isn’t really any decent open casting protocol with adoption. DLNA (UPnP) is pretty well implemented in proprietary devices (besides uncontrollable latency up to 10s on Samsung TVs), but there are neither decent fre…
Yeah, I was following that activity, but as it's key-based Google simply revoked the keys and devices would no longer stream to it.
There used to be a solution to extract the key from your own Chromecast to simply use it for your own purposes.
But then they evolved the protocol to Cast_v2 which IIRC had more hardened security, so it's just a matter of time until they stopped supporting v1 and simply lock out all devices.
It's a pity, because it would be great to push content to custom receivers in your house (i.e. send a YouTube link to a Squeezebox server)
Re: Moments in Chromecast's history
#229How much longer until we reach the logical conclusion here? - "Google kills off Google"
I chose React Native recently over Flutter for a new bunch of apps that I'm making. Go seems to be the only one which survives the terrible management of Google.
Re: Moments in Chromecast's history
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I own the 4K Chromecast and it's pretty good. But in my opinion "Chromecast" was always a bad brand name. I guess it originated in the browser, but it's so far removed from that now; "Chrome" no longer makes sense.
Probably true, but it's not like "Google TV Streamer" is any better.
There’s gonna be about 12 more names/products before they settle on something.