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Moments in Chromecast's history

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Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#61

Post by arghwhat »

pydry wrote: post #31
rickdeckard wrote: post #4

well, 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...

miracast is a decent standard. i'm not sure why we'd need chromecast's proprietary equivalent as well. the fact that google dropped it from stock android kind of says it all - they clearly think that chromecast isn't good enough to compete without being coddled.

Miracast is for streaming a video feed from a device. This is horrible for battery life, AV sync and cannot deal with things like HDR content and remote input.

Cast and Airplay makes the device itself fetch and play content, with local control and importantly much better display and video manage.

(AirPlay and Cast both support screen sharing, but that is not the main use case.)

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#62

Post by skiman10 »

aestetix wrote: post #8

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.

Twice the price with a chip from 2021.

https://www.androidauthority.com/google-tv-streamer-processo...

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#64

Post by solarkraft »

rickdeckard wrote: post #4

well, 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 free receiver implementations nor many control options (other than that the concept isn’t bad).

Google Cast is smart (with its „we‘ll just give you a whole browser“ concept) and AirPlay works excellently well. Both are proprietary (guess I’m lucky to have both a Macbook and a Samsung TV).

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#65

Post by SoftTalker »

aestetix wrote: post #8

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.

Same thing + "AI"

We're going to be seeing a lot of this in the next year or two.

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#66

Post by indymike »

I wonder if sales are down that much now that every new TV has Roku or something similar built-in. The Chromecast's form factor was fantastic, but it really left a lot of features on the table compared to Amazon, Roku, and even Onn (Wal-Mart's house brand) streaming sticks.

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#67

Post by yieldcrv »

I used to love Chromecast and I love the concept but since 2020 My ISPs have sent me non-configurable routers, they broadcast 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz Wifi on the same spectrum. This bricked my older devices that can't figure out how to find the 2.4Ghz only network.

I never bought the newer Chromecast and its just been sitting idle, hopeless dangling off of an HDMI port since. My world has moved on as literally everything else can get shows displaying on a TV including the TV.

I guess it was coming.

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#68

Post by arrosenberg »

transcriptase wrote: post #55

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?

> What perverse incentives do they have to slowly and steadily make them worse than they were out of the box?

Its Google, so almost certainly advertising related tracking (and the associated bloat)

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#69

Post by woodrowbarlow »

mbreese wrote: post #23

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 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.

i'm surprised netflix or amazon hasn't tried to create a standardized protocol for asking another client to initiate a stream from a provider on your behalf, including passing account credentials and allowing for widevine and other drm. if this was successful, it would open the market for chromecast-like-devices from other vendors.

Re: Moments in Chromecast's history

#70

Post by pradn »

If brands can be put on the balance sheet as "goodwill", how much money was burnt by obliterating this brand name - one almost as generic as Kleenex, for its product category (small streaming-first HDMI dongles)?
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