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Moments in Chromecast's history

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Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#491

Post by entropicdrifter »

cubefox wrote: post #402
paxys wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably true, but it's not like "Google TV Streamer" is any better.

"Google TV Streamer" pretty exactly describes what this thing does. It's from Google, and it streams things to your TV. "Chromecast" was more puzzling. What's "Chrome"? Isn't that a browser? What does this have to do with anything? And what is "cast"? Does it broadcast something? Etc.

On the other hand, "Google TV Streamer" also describes Chromecasts and is immensely less memorable or distinctive.

It'd be like if Apple decided to rebrand Macbook to be "Apple Laptop". Sure, it's accurate. It's also crap.

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#492

Post by entropicdrifter »

copperroof wrote: post #398
wkat4242 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's really what kills it for me. Why do I have ads on a device I paíd for??

This drives me nuts. When I first got the original fire tv it was fast and had no ads. I could easily recommend it. Now it’s stuffed to the brim with ads and is incredibly slow. When this one dies I’ll likely not buy a hardware device from Amazon ever again.

At least on a Roku you can block the ads with a PiHole

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#494

Post by wiseowise »

jerf wrote: post #134
lxgr wrote: post #24

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…

> full summaries, reviews and season-by-season breakdowns of content

Who even needs this crap? Just watch the goddamn show, people.

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#495

Post by entropicdrifter »

SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #202
entropicdrifter wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The oen thing no device currently has that the shield does that I'd need to see to replace mine is support for HD audio codecs. I play blu-ray rips on my shield through my Jellyfin server and it supports bitstreaming DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD without any decoding on the streaming device. The Shield is literally the only streaming device on the market that I'm aware of that does this. Without it, I wouldn't…

I'm in a similar boat. For audio it says it supports "Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Atmos", so I guess we can only assume that means DTS-X is missing. But supporting HDR10+ a nice win over the shield, and it also does support the necessities like HLG, H.265, H.264, VP9, and AV1.

Dolby Atmos support without Dolby TrueHD means TrueHD tracks with Atmos will play without it. If those are the codecs it supports that means it'll only stream Atmos when it's Atmos encoded over Dolby Digital Plus, which to be fair is what e.g. Prime, Netflix, and Disney will stream to you anyhow, but it doesn't help with watching my rips.

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#496

Post by xnx »

Like a lot of Google products, the branding story has been very confusing. Small possibility that this is a step toward cleaning up some of the historical mess:

Chromecast

Chromecast Ultra

Chromecast with Google TV

Google TV

YouTube TV

YouTube Premium

YouTube Music

YouTube Red

etc.

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#497

Post by TehShrike »

hocuspocus wrote: post #322
TehShrike wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not a thing. Do you seriously believe OEMs would ship a 4G/5G modem and bundle an unlimited data plan with low margin consumer electronics, just to earn a few dollars per year from ads?

If it gave them enough extra data to sell, yes?

I don't think Sony or Samsung would be paying consumer prices for cheap low-end cell chips or bulk low-bandwidth data plans.

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#499

Post by Takennickname »

calmoo wrote: post #476
ncr100 wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$218 for 43 inch TCL S4 television, (with Google TV built in) https://www.walmart.com/ip/TCL-43-Class-S-Class-4K-UHD-HDR-L... $99 for Google Streamer. This "streamer" is overpriced for the market.

Damn it’s kinda crazy a 43 inch tv can cost 218 dollars

Surplus panels from old technology. Absolutely amazing if you're not a consumerist moron who needs the newest technology because of FOMO.

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#500

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

sitkack wrote: post #466
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roku sells dongles at the same price point, without many other services with which to subsidize the hardware. I am sure Roku monetizes the users in the same ways as Google can, so I do not understand how Google cannot make a profit from them.

It can, but it has to support all the ads infrastructure that is about to collapse.

About to collapse? How so?
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