321–330 of 609 posts
Also this is the first product they killed that I agree with.
I'm suddenly reminded to ask this community whom I assume might know: Are there any good "dumb tv" solutions out there? I'm thinking 1-4 HDMI ports, and a maximum of RF tuning and input-switching on the firmware. Products would be preferred suggestions, but I'm even at the point of considering DIY solutions, if something looks lego-ish enough!
I'll echo what other people are saying, that you should just not connect the smart tv to your wifi, but I am nervous about smart TVs that ship with cell chips to connect to the manufacturer's servers when people don't hook the device up to wifi. I'm not sure how to determine which models do or don't ship with cell chips.
Whenever I submit Google Home/Chromecast bugs/feature requests I include some snark in my sign-off like "I know you don't care about this product and it will be killed soon, but if I'm wrong please consider the suggestions above."
Stuff that you install in your house is generally expected to last a long time. Imagine centering your home around Google and having them unceremoniously kill it. I'm glad a vendor neutral open source project like Home Assistant exists.
Edit: apparently some form of this already happened with their alarm system. The $400 paperweight comment in this article hits hard -- shame on them for creating so much e-waste -- https://www.cnet.com/home/security/googles-nest-secure-has-f...
The old Chromecast experience -- choose media on phone, play on TV -- is all I ever wanted. I hate using a remote to browse -- my phone is much better. I hate having my TV logged into an account -- my family, kids, guests all use the same TV and I don't want them using my account, nor do I want to see their account when I'm using it.
The Chromecast protocol is the only thing that the entire ecosystem of Android streaming apps integrates nicely with. I wish Google would open it up to third parties to create Chromecast-replacement devices... but of course they won't. They aren't doing what's best for users, they are doing what's best for their engagement metrics and revenue. And thus, our experience actually gets worse.
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…
I have no idea why they think that "full summaries, reviews and season-by-season breakdowns of content" is even a feature worth mentioning. The going value of that on the current market is $0. Heck, at times it's negative, you have to go out of your way to avoid the info if you don't want it. And there is no way whatsoever that this is happening locally. A $100 device is not spontaneously ingesting video, running spe…
If I can get a movie summary from a real intelligence for free online, why would I bother with an AI generated summary?
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…
> an exceptionally well-liked and popular brand name I don't think so at all. I'm not sure if anyone I know outside of tech has ever even heard of Chromecast. It was never super popular. While every single one of them knows what an Apple TV is, and they know what the Chrome browser is. The replacement makes much more sense. It's just branded as Google, and what it does -- it's a TV streamer. The branding tells you th…
Earlier 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.…
> 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.
Matter Cast has what to me are grevious limitations:
1. Connecting clients can only talk to existing Endpoints running on the target device. If I use Tidal for example, the smart speaker or smart TV needs to already be setup with that app, and needs to be willing to let a background service run & register itself with the platform. https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip/blob/master/...
2. Only native apps are supported. There's no protocol to say open a webpage & control that. As a solo dev I can throw together a universal Presentation API multi-display experience in hours. Shipping even one native app would take many weekends & lots of legal hoops. Getting on the apps store for even 50% of TV's or speakers seems daunting beyond imagining.
3. No support for multi-party sessions. Only one user can interact at a time.
4. No support for the Web's Presentation API. Since it's not based around urls & web pages, it would require lots of additional work to make it support the standard web pages have to spawn a remote display.
By compare, Open Screen Protocol lets any target device open any web page, which is very similar to how Chromecast development works today (and how DIAL worked before). Whether the target device is Android, Apple, WebOS, Windows, Tizen, or other, the expectation that I could Open Screen Protocol cast to it remains the same. Where-as Matter Cast requires a native app on the device & the app has to be installed & potentially even greenlit by the target device platform itself.
OpenScreenProtocol really looks to have it all, & the model is so much more universal. Really wish we saw some device makers pushing for it these days.
They also announced Google Streamer, which is just Google Chromecast but more expensive I guess, and also with the Nest technology for smart home stuff, which they also killed iirc. I have to say, I don't really see this product strategy as being good, or working. Google's product is just a mess, they are nearing Microsoft levels of incoherence. When you compare Google with Apple, it's such a night and day experience…
Ah, yes, Microsoft - the second largest company in the world - with a brand itself worth more than all but a handful of companies - is incoherent. And Google, too.
Lots 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the thing is Roku has far less data on me than Google. They might have viewing history or whatever, but it's not tied to my entire identity on the web the way Google can do that. So not it's not as creepy or worse than Google, not by a long shot.
> But the thing is Roku has far less data on me than Google Do they? They have your IP address, most likely email, user IDs for various streaming platforms, your location... All of that for sale to anyone that will pay Roku for it.