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.
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...
The "Chromecast with Google TV" main upgrade for my use case (watching YouTube) was to introduce longer ads. For that reason I've lost faith in this product line and this rebranding (and price increase) guarantees I won't be getting one of these.
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.)
The practical upshot is the same. Whether I get my TV to play a youtube video or play it on my phone and cast, it still plays, at least with wifi 6 (earlier versions were flaky).
I also DGAF about battery life. If im watching TV, I have power nearby and im not moving anywhere. Id be charging my phone anyway.
The practical upshot is not the same in any way or form. Miracast is complete garbage for video content.
With one solution, you get good quality playback (including anti-judder from your TV), correct color handling (e.g., 10-bit, HDR, Dolby Vision, whatever), HDMI CEC volume control from the “source” device, and remote control support on the TV.
With the other, you get recompressed content at random source resolution with improper frame pacing (TV cannot so anti-judder of a re-compressed 3:2 pulldown source), poor AV sync, a color space likely crushed to 8-bit with incorrect gamma, no integration and a device that is throwing its battery out the window - even if you don’t feel like you need your battery, Miracast still has no redeeming qualities for this usecase.
Miracast is great for presentations and other scenarios that strictly need screen mirroring though.
Miracast is not content-aware, it's just a standard to stream a video over Wi-Fi, competing with Intel Wireless Display (and other proprietary Wireless Display implementations)
The beauty of the Google Cast protocol is that you can hand over meta-data as well as the actual source-URL to the receiver and it can initiate the stream directly.
> 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.
Google had a basic implementation in AOSP to kickstart things, but when being deployed to the market it turned out to be too cumbersome and complicated:
1. Each vendor had to certify his device for Miracast implementation with the Wi-Fi Alliance.
2. The Miracast receiver (sink) was buggy in many TV-sets and often didn't even work well with devices from the same vendor (i.e. Samsung Galaxy with Samsung TV)
3. Mobile Chipset vendors (Qualcomm, Mediatek) started to provide their own Miracast implementations to make more efficient use of their HW-architecture
4. Power-consumption of Miracast was too high (the device has to encode it's display content into a H.264 stream)
In the end Google saw the potential to deliver a good experience with a cheap dongle and took matters in their own hands. Miracast on AOSP was not maintained further because it was anyway not used by any major device-vendor (Samsung, LG, Sony, Motorola)
Most major vendors add it themselves because google refuses to put it in stock. Samsung calls it smart view, for instance. My phone calls it screencast.
I use it every day and the experience is decent. Google just didnt like the competition from an open standard i guess. but, they dont control what vendors do.
I dont want a proprietary content aware equivalent. There is no beauty to sending metadata separately. There is beauty in having a dead simple way of mirroring whats on my phone that will play any kind of video.
> Most major vendors add it themselves because google refuses to put it in stock. Samsung calls it smart view, for instance. My phone calls it screencast.
No, as said, vendors add it themselves because the core functionality is now provided and maintained by the vendor of the device-chipset. A generic AOSP ("stock") implementation was proven to be inferior to a custom Miracast component tailored for i.e. Qualcomm DSP/GPU, that's why AOSP didn't continue maintaining it.
> the market moved on from simple wireless display dongles.
Has it? Then it must have left me behind somewhere.
My Chromecast does 4K, Dolby Vision, runs Android TV, has a usable remote. What needs to change? There's no newer A/V standard available anyway! I literally couldn't think of anything else I'd want it to do.
(Google could, of course, and it's somehow "AI", even though that probably just runs in the cloud anyway?)
> My Chromecast does 4K, Dolby Vision, runs Android TV, has a usable remote
That's what Google calls "Google TV" now, a product which still exists. During the transition they called the dongles "Chromecast with Google TV". Now the "Chromecast" part of it is discontinued and its all "Google TV".
So that's not going away? I really can't tell from TFA. The entire thing seems like a hot mess – the link I was hoping would explain why I'd want AI in my Chromecast successor is dead/404 as well in the "Google TV streamer" announcement (https://blog.google/products/google-nest/google-tv-streamer/).
From what I understand, this is the product they mean with "we're ending production of Chromecast, which will now only be available while supplies last."
They kept using the "Chromecast" brand just for dongles, and are now discontinuing all dongles in favor of a single new product.
My guess is that they reached a point where it's more economic to merge the GoogleTV reference design (ADT-3, ADT-4) with their Dongle-line and create a single box which serves both purposes...
You haven't been left behind. You've already made the transition.
In the old paradigm, the Chromecast was not the starting point for TV watching. Some other device, typically a smartphone, was. That's why the old Chromecasts did not include a remote control or have a home screen.
In the new paradigm, the Chromecast is the starting point. It has a remote. You can install apps on it, and it has a home screen to launch them from.
The first device of the new paradigm was still called a Chromecast, even though casting was no longer the core functionality. Now the brand is being made more consistent with what the devices in the new paradigm actually do.
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).
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)
A nice feature of Chromecast is that the device was really just a remote control. After starting a show it would continue even if your phone caught fire. This is obviously great for battery life but also means that multiple people can control the media (works great for YouTube where multiple people can queue videos, play, pause, etc...)
I would love to see something like Chromecast but open.
1. MDNS to find the display.
2. Send a URL to display.
3. Devices can send messages (with some way to tell them appart for security reasons, probably require and explicit opt-in to receive messages from non-initiator devi
This is similar to the current protocol except step 2 is to send an app ID registered and approved by Google rather than an arbitrary URL. (Or some pre-made apps for things like playing a video from a URL or screen mirroring)
> To ensure that the correct name for each application is well-defined and to avoid naming conflicts,
Application Names must be registered in the DIAL Registry.
This has exactly the same "pre approved" list problem as Chromecast. But it is actually worse because you can only launch apps that are already installed on the device. (Better in some ways because there may be advantages to native apps, but worse for openness and small competitors)
DLNA is an okay concept, but codec support is all over the place. I've yet to run into a device that doesn't support MPEG-2 MP/ML, and all devices support something above that, but there's not a single codec and profile that has sufficiently widespread support for HD video.
> Unfortunately no sign of Google Cast protocol being opened for general purpose use.
Open Screen Protocol exists and is very similar. It works and you can use it today (via the one and only reference implementation in the Chromium source tree)!
It's even pretty good & makes sense!
This was kind of part of the bargain for adding Presentation API to the web back in 2014/2015. Your site can itself trigger Chromecast! If that's true, then it seemed clear there should be a standardized way to talk to devices too, otherwise this wasn't really much of a standard. The same front-side/back-side happened with Web Push API for web sites which lead to the creation of a Web Push Protocol backend for actually sending push messages to the browser. It's not perfect but so far the web has somewhat stayed honest with APIs for the page having implementable backend protocols too. Presentation API sample (which oddly cant find my Chromecasts?):
https://googlechrome.github.io/samples/presentation-api/
I really really wish there was some hardware support for this! I've been meaning to set it up locally & start using it some. Writing a native client seems not too absurdly hard.
> Open Screen Protocol exists and is very similar.
Like any client-server protocol, it's useless if the devices and apps you use don't support it. Exactly zero of the apps I use to cast to my Chromecast supports Open Screen Protocol. And this isn't a case where I can just switch to a new client app. Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Jellyfin, etc. would have to all support it.
It's still in draft (but seemingly has stabilized a lot in the past 2 years). And there's such a a chicken & egg between software & devices neither supporting OpenScreenProtocol. I get your skepticism but what do you want? The same could be said about any other option than Chromecast: it doesn't exist on devices or software.
The really good news is that At least for many many apps, the effort to port to OpenScreemCast should be reasonably minimal. Chromecast for much of it's life has - under the covers - been web o ly, and rejiggering for the mild differences between Cast and OSP shouldn't be that wild.
Where-as Matter Cast requires native apps on the target device, and the app has to be pre installed to work.
Not really a surprise. I'd have been more unhappy a number of years back but mostly use an Apple TV these days. Not quite a 1:1 replacement for everything though.
Thanks for the tip. For streaming from the web I mostly find that just connecting a laptop to HDMI works pretty well but you obviously have to be near the TV. At one point, I bought a second Apple TV for another TV and I confess I haven't really used Chromecast--which at one point I considered pretty essential--in a while.
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.
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.
And that can run games on par with last-gen consoles (below PS4, but significantly above Switch level in terms of raw GFLOPs)!
At their original price point, Chromecasts were pretty great, but why on earth would I pay the same as an Apple TV for something containing an SoC from 2021? I wasn't able to find reliable numbers, but performance seems to be lower by 1-2 orders of magnitude.
Does the Apple TV work well without an iPhone? I worry it'll be missing half the features. With the Chromecast I can use my phone as a remote, whether that's iOS or Android, for example.
The Apple TV comes with a great remote, and an iPhone not only isn't necessary, the backup "if you lost your remote" interface on the iPhone is kind of bad.
Though if you lose your remote in the cushions or whatever note that your iPhone can be used as a "hotter hotter colder colder" method to find the remote. Was surprised to find this feature. https://support.apple.com/en-ca/108371
The only feature I can think of that you would miss is using the phone to type passwords on the Apple TV (instead of using the keyboard-less remote). Set that up once, and you should otherwise not know the difference. Otherwise, my iPhone needs no interaction with the ATV.
Especially when everyone’s tv now does all this pretty much? I cannot imagine successfully getting my gf to switch to this from the Roku integrated in her tv.
I think this can actually compete with, and might be better than, the nvidia shield pro. Since 2019, I don't think we've had such a device (last I checked).
The "best devices" lineup has been the nvidia shield pro, Roku ultra, and Apple tv 4k, with Roku being the cheapest at $99.
If you don't care about decoding support for all the different video formats, HDR10, dolby xy and z, etc., then these sorts of devices might not be for you.
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 get the Atmos/DTS:X information passed on to my receiver when watching blu-ray rips.
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.
> many reviewers praised the Amazon devices for having good performance, so the new Google TV Streamer likely won’t be a slouch when it comes to loading apps or scrolling through the homescreen.
In 2021 they praised the device as having good performance at a price point that is ~$30-40 less than what Google is launching their device at. The second gen of that Fire stick is selling for $40 right now on sale with Wi-Fi 6E. I saw some benchmarks posted of this chip and some others (with a Pixel 6 thrown in arguing that using a bunch of older Tensor chips might have also been a good idea.) And also a Shield TV which is 5 years old at this point.
Still wondering how Zoom managed to pull that off - granted, they have a single offering, but describing it as "stable" is a stretch. And the UI is such a mess, don't get me started...
Dont forget Allo. Goes to show how much role luck plays in these companies' success and it is so strange that others still copy what Google, Amazon and these companies are doing thinking that they have some sort of management hack or routine which makes them successful but in fact they become successful despite of their bad practices not because of it.
My 2019 Philips android tv got incredibly slow after years of updates. I didn’t notice it because it was so incremental but after some years the chromecast functionality started failing consistently. I did a factory reset, disconnected from the internet and added a Google TV dongle. TV is super fast again. Point of the story: it’s very nice to be able to buy a $ 50-100 dongle every 5 years and keep your old tv.
This is exactly the approach I've taken. Current TV is 14 years old and survived numerous house moves. Still as good as new.
Most usage is via a Chromecast Ultra. I have a Chromecast 4K with TV (i.e. newer device) but it was a backwards step from an experience perspective (covered by others elsewhere).
For clarity: the discussion here is about the Chromecast hardware product, the little HDMI stick. Chromecast the protocol remains supported pervasively via Google and third party products (many/most TVs take it natively, for instance). It just didn't have a home, no one wants to buy something that's already pre-installed. Ours comes out once every few months on vacation, for example.
If Apple were run like Google, the iPhone would have been cancelled half a dozen times only to be resurrected as Apple Phone++ and Pocket AI, repeatedly investing in and torching brand awareness while distracting resources from product development to internal promotion and marketing the newest brand at the top of the escalator.
This seems like an unnecessarily cynical take. As a Chromecast user, both the price increase and the name change make sense to me.
The current generation Chromecast (Chromecast with Google TV (4K)) was fast and responsive when it launched, but software updates have made it almost unusually laggy over time. Obviously the best solution here would be “just make the software fast again”, but not all the relevant software is written by Google, and the third party apps need to be fast even if they are not well-optimized. The previous hardware wasn’t up to the task, and the dongle form factor makes thermals a challenge regardless of what chip you put in. A set top box format + more capable chip + the general trend in higher component costs = a higher BOM cost. I think Google has correctly judged that many consumers are willing to pay a higher cost for a more responsive device.
The name change just makes sense, because the previous name was terrible. “Google Chromecast with Google TV (4K)” is… a mouthful. The “Google Chromecast” branding is also associated with the “casting” UX flow that was the only way to interact with the first 3 generations of Chromecast devices. The majority of interaction with the current generation devices is probably through the remote (including the voice search feature on the remote). “Google TV Streamer” conveys the use case much more clearly.
I get as frustrated as anyone else when Google kills products I use, but this clearly isn’t a case of that. They’re just releasing a new generation with some changes that plausibly meet consumer demand a bit better than the old version.
I wouldn't expect much performance difference here:
> Although the specifications for the MT8696 haven’t been published by MediaTek anywhere online, Amazon [which also used it in the past] says that the MT8696(T) variant of the chipset in the 2nd Gen model features a quad-core CPU clocked at up to 2.0GHz. The core design is ARM’s Cortex-A55
> The 2020 Chromecast with Google TV (4K) utilized Amlogic’s S905X3 SoC with four ARM Cortex-A55 cores clocked at up to 1.9GHz
So both use 4 x Cortex-A55. The alleged "22% faster CPU performance" does sound strange, as the maximum clock speed is merely ~5% higher. Though it does have more RAM (4 GB instead of 2 GB).
They could have used a more recent SoC instead of the Mediatek from 2021, which would have been more efficient, but also more expensive. Making it a box instead of a dongle could also be motivated by better audio recording ability (for AI assistants), perhaps.
I would expect thermals to be significantly better in a set top box form factor compared to a dongle. My Chromecast with Google TV is often hot to the touch, so I would expect that it spends a lot of time thermally-limited, and not operating at peak frequency. A larger heat sink could make a big difference there.
At the same time, the current generation Apple TV will absolutely smoke this thing in performance, even though the Apple TV is at the end of its refresh cycle.
I suspect that being a dongle is part of the appeal of Chromecast for many people.
At least I definitely don't want more visible external boxes behind/next to my TV, especially if they don't even need line-of-sight to the remote since that's all Bluetooth anyway these days.
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.
Chromecast is core to how my family’s television usage works. I got a free Chromecast recently and it’s a much worse UX than the ones I got many years ago.
What I wish for is for the ubiquitous Cast button found everywhere to be open and neutral and for there to be a whole market of devices that’ll work. It feels frustrating and kind of ugly that there’s an Apple version and a Google version, etc.
I am taking a look at the Nvidia shield, which also uses the cast button. I have 3 Chromecasts that need to be replaced, but the cheapest Shield is $150!!
I guess each time Google kills something and I remove one more part of my life from their ecosystem they are doing me the real favor.
They are hoping you will subscribe to their streaming service, but it works just fine without subscribing to theirs. It also aggregates multiple streaming services into a consolidated guide rather nicely.
Not as nice as Channels DVR (which also lets you record streams and will strip commercials), but one of the nicer streaming boxes for the money.
Is there any substitute for chrome cast audio? I love being able to play in sync audio to the group of receivers I choose throughout the property, using any amplifier. I’m not even using the digital optical input and I love them
The point was that you could have an optical out connection to a Hi-Fi system and things would just work from Spotify, etc... The google speakers don't even have an aux out. A Rasperry Pi isn't at all equivalent as it's not plug and play.
I think Sonos sued the heck out of Google for those, and it caused those devices to disappear for a few years. Sonos lost that case late last year though, so hopefully we'll see a resurgence?
> I think Sonos sued the heck out of Google for those, and it caused those devices to disappear for a few years.
Oh so that was why they disappeared? Seriously, it's time to rework the entire patents system. You should only get a patent granted when you attach a reasonable (!) price tag and agree to non-discriminatory licensing.
I think that's the reason, but I can't be sure. It probably didn't help, that's for sure...
Had I known Sonos would be like that, I wouldn't have bought their products. Their latest app also totally broke the speakers. Stay far far away from Sonos.
I am fairly certain that the academic open source community had already published prior art for delay correction and volume control of speaker groups (which are obvious problems when you add multiple speakers to a system with transmission delay). IIRC there was a microsoft research blog post with a list of open source references for distributed audio from prior to 2006 for certain. (Which further invalidates the patent claims in question).
Before they locked Chromecast protocol down, it was easy to push audio from a linux pulseaudio sound server to Chromecast device(s).
The awkwardly-named "WiiM Pro" is a device that claims to support Chromecast Audio (and a bunch of other stuff like Airplay and Spotify Connect). It's been getting good reviews but I haven't pulled the trigger yet.
A lot of networked receivers/audio systems have C4A (Cast 4 Audio) built-in, and they should support grouping. I have a Sony receiver-esque audio system and it plays in sync with my Google Home speakers very nicely.
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 hampered by the phone requirement. Part of this is my house having kids without phone who would have liked to have access to Netflix, and part is due to my Apple TV use, which I use far more often.
I'm sure there will be some loss of functionality here, but hopefully it's with the benefit of a much better user experience.
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.
I was at my brother's on vacation and we were sharing some vacation pics. The mirroring worked pretty well but I do wish there were a straightforward way to just cast a browser to a TV in a standard way.
In Windows, you can press Win+K to pull up the Cast menu. Lots of smart TVs and streaming devices will work with it. You can mirror or extend your display to it.
> 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.
DIAL is literally discovery and launch. The discovery part is just SSDP. The rest of DIAL is entirely state tracking the stream, sending playback commands, requests to launch content, etc. through REST endpoints. It seems entirely possible to me for a revision of the spec based off mDNS for discovery rather than UPnP, and most of the document would be the same.
The DIAL spec documents spend three pages talking about discovery and sixteen pages talking about state tracking, launching, HDMI-CEC, etc.
It's a pretty basic protocol spec since it mostly relies on things like UPnP for discovery and HTTP REST so a lot of complications are already defined in other specs.
There's a lot of Matter Cast that feels fairly reasonable as a protocol, but the flaws here are so wildly absurd. I want this effort to sink so bad. As a protocol I vastly prefer Open Screen Protocol, which was begat to support W3c Secondary Screen wg's Presentstion API.
https://w3c.github.io/openscreenprotocol/https://www.w3.org/TR/presentation-api/
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.
>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.
> 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.
The standardized protocol already exists and it’s called DLNA which Chromecast initially cannibalized in its first release and then basically killed off every single other DLNA provider and app because they Sherlocked the feature into the Android operating system and to the Chrome browser.
Now that they are at risk of being split up for their monopoly, and as they lose an Antitrust case for their search monopoly, they are probably looking to kill off the Chrome brand because Chrome is how they entirely dominated the web, warping it to their standards and killing more open standards in favor of their Proprietary technology.
DLNA is meant to play media from a media server on a home network. It doesn't make sense for Internet services to implement DMS. The relevant standard for casting using web protocols is DIAL.
I vaguely remember DLNA... Which is to say, I remember it barely working at best and mostly just wasting a lot of time debugging configuration and network nonsense.
Arguably the biggest advantage of Chromecast was just not having to deal with all that.
True, but at that point, what does the "Chrome" part of Chromecast mean? It made much more sense when the device was tied to a browser, and then (kinda) apps on a phone. Once they added a remote, I think the writing was on the wall for the name "Chromecast".
but the new brand is actually "Google TV Streamer" (3 words)
why didnt they just go for "Google TV" (2 words)
they also could have played a bit "Google TOP" (because its a table top device) , "Google S" (S for Streamer) , i think the 3 word "Google TV Streamer" , is function over form gone wrong
I think they've always had CEC remote control anyway. Was still a surprise the first time I backed out of a youtube video using the TV remote and saw what looked like the entire youtube app with search and everything.
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 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.
"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.
> It'd be like if Apple decided to rebrand Macbook to be "Apple Laptop". Sure, it's accurate. It's also crap.
You get used to it. They also called the Apple smartwatch "Apple Watch" from the beginning, and nobody is complaining. So "Apple Laptop" or "Apple Phone" would be just as good.
You could say the same about "Chromebooks" -- but that doesn't matter anymore. Thanks to Chromebooks dominating schools and Google's general ubiquity, almost everyone knows what Chrome is if you've used a computer in the past decade.
The only market who wouldn't know is the same crowd that would never use a smart TV anyway.
Yes but that's really the same as this just in a separate box. Makes total sense to bring it under the same naming tree.
I'd call it "Google TV Box" though. Streaming is too contrived and not everyone knows what it means. Xiaomi use the Box naming too and that seems to go down well.
> Confused as to why "Google TV" didn't win out in the end.
The reason Google TV didn't win (and the reason why it kind of did) is that Google TV already won for something else closely related, which this is being associated with:
I agree, but they're not just rebranding. They also doubled the price, ostensibly because they changed the form factor and added "AI". I don't need a visible device or AI just to stream YouTube or other video apps.
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.
Sure, but I do not see how that improves by focusing on the “premium” hardware. Unless the box is actually cheaper, I would expect the AI capabilities to cost more (either on cloud infrastructure or higher performance chips). Worsening their margin per unit.
People just want to watch Netflix or Disney with minimum friction. A box that is twice the price of the competition, with questionably useful AI features does not seem a winning play.
> I would expect the AI capabilities to cost more (either on cloud infrastructure or higher performance chips). Worsening their margin per unit.
This is a problem for the next exec after the one behind this has happily parachuted to his next position before the chickens come home to roost on things like "long-term costs" and "fit with the overarching corporate strategy".
How does search make them money? They are paying everyone to be their default search. Isn't search just an input of data to push ads based on the search as well as taking the user with more metrics based on the search query?
It was a good brand name when it launched, but not for how it evolved.
It was a device that made it possible to cast video from your Chrome browser. When it was released in 2013 it reinforced the superior utility of Chrome which had just began to dominate browser market share.
Embedding the Google Cast protocol directly into video streaming apps and having the Chromecast brand name coexist alongside the Android TV and Google TV brand names made things confusing.
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.
Yeah sadly this doesn't work on a Fire TV Stick. It ignores DHCP and uses its own DNS resolver. Probably DoH or something, I didn't dig that deep into it.
Yep that's what I have now. Same story. It started with ever bigger ads for prime shows, then ads for shows on other streamers I don't subscribe to. And now half-screen apps for chocolates and perfumes etc. In Spain by the way.
Also now I have to pay extra to skip ads on prime :(
I'm thinking of getting an Apple TV but considering how expensive it is I'm waiting for the next version. I don't want to pay top dollar for the 2022 version.
I have one of these and I am going to be blunt: I just can't figure out the privacy. At. All. I have kids (and their many friends) running through the house using TVs and streaming etc and I don't want them browsing through my YouTube viewing history or filling it up with their dumb kid shows nor accessing things I don't think are appropriate at random times.
But for whatever reason when I plug in the 4K with Google it's the annoying nagbot that refuses to do anything unless I'm logged in (not to mention my password is not exactly easy to type using the remote) and then it drags in my whole YouTube history and the device is useless and nags you to hell when not logged in.
It's so much easier and less insane to just use Roku. I can throw YouTube videos at the Roku without being logged in and the device works just fine. Google seems to be constantly changing things and I have no interest in playing wack-a-mole with whatever thing they decide to change this week.
Roku's just work and they rarely change. That trust just does not exist with Google's products.
The prompt to login whenever you cast to an arbitrary TV feels like a footgun. I don't want whatever community I'm watching with to know what the algorithm thinks I like. The distance between "annoying" and "embarrassing" is directly correlated to who is in the room to observe.
Exactly! For the Chromecast at our cabin, the fact that people cast from their own phone is a feature. No shared logins between families staying there, no need to log in and out from some additional device.
Yup, I agree. They really should not have called this "with Google TV" thing a "Chromecast" in the first place. The earlier Chromecast devices were so simple and extremely pleasant to use. They did their thing extremely well. It really felt like a bait and switch when I unboxed this and plugged in. It doesn't even show up as a cast destination in YouTube when not logged in while every single Roku in the house is there and does what the old Chromecasts used to do. To be fair a remote for pause and volume seemed like a natural addition, because that had been a bit clunky with the older Chromecasts when doing like family watching. I also really liked the Chromecast Audio while it worked. After this "with Google TV" thing Chromecast moved from one of my regular recommends to family etc to never being mentioned.
I have had a few generations of Chromecast, including the OG from ten years ago.
The latest one in my bunch has a remote and menus and stuff, and is what I presume y'all are talking about. I've seen it referred to as CCWGTV.
"Privacy" seems easy-enough and is not so dissimilar to "privacy" on any other shared computer: Just set up profiles. One for you, one or more for kids, one for guests, or whatever makes sense.
For your own profile, set a PIN. (The included d-pad remote makes PIN entry easy-enough.)
Aaaand... done?
Mine also does old-school phone-driven Chromecast stuff just fine with zero profiles logged in -- while it is just sitting there at the profile-select screen. In this mode, it accepts Youtube and Spotify and whatever else I throw at it.
Exactly -- it's not an end at all, just a rebranding.
And it's about time. "Chromecast" was always a terrible brand IMHO, because it had utterly nothing whatsoever to do with Chrome, except that there happened to be a "Cast..." menu item in Chrome. But you can cast from lots of apps that aren't Chrome. It would have made just as much sense to call it "Gmailcast" -- that is to say, no sense at all.
"Google TV Streamer" isn't particularly memorable, but it's perfectly logical and intuitive. And it doesn't introduce confusion with a browser. Google wants the brand to be Google directly, not some sub-brand. Makes sense to me.
From a user perspective you're right but from a technical sense, Chromecast got its roots as little more than a remote-controlled Chrome session. Alike the Netflix DIAL protocol that it evolved from, Chromecast was for many years merely a hdmi-out stick device that ran Chrome!
It would have been interesting if there was an alternate path where Chromecast really did expose its underlying browser-ness better. If I could just tell my phone to cast hacker news and then scroll on my phone's screen. I wonder if that was ever considered.
Also note that ChromeOS was also a web-centered thing at the time, so there was some symbiosis with that. Both web powered tech platforms. But given the recent announcement that Google is killing ChromeOS & Android is the way forward for everyone, well, extra sensible that Chromecast has to go: finalizing/cementing the (imo unfortunate for all) cultural victory of Android-over-all at Google.
I agree. The branding doesn't really matter as long as casting still works. It seems like an odd choice for Google to frame this in such dramatic terms, especially when so many people have already been burned by their tendency to kill popular products out of the blue.
I get the lamentation of the final nail in the coffin of what was just a simple wireless HDMI dongle, and I agree that there's a real need for that. Having said that, I love my 4K Google TV Chromecasts. All I'd ever wanted was something that combined the Fire TV Stick and the Chromecast into one device, and this delivered perfectly. The compact form factor makes it easy to keep a spare in my backpack for whenever I might need it while away from home, which comes in handy often.
My problem with this is that it sounds like they're discontinuing a product that works perfectly well, and replacing it with something slightly worse (for my use case) at 2x the price. Granted, for now they are still selling the Chromecast, so they have time to introduce a future "Google TV Streamer Mini" that retains the form factor of the Chromecast. As long as they do that, I don't really care what they call it.
For the right user, the Chromecast is the perfect device. Trouble is, for multi-user households or other users that don't fit the perfect mold its flaws quickly become apparent. Hopefully this device can fix most of the flaws while still providing that easy way of getting video from my device to my TV screen without logins and apps or anything getting in the way. I don't use "casting" often but there are times when it is by far the easiest way to view content.
Well, back in the day (and I feel old now), the ability to cast a chrome tab to a TV with a $30 dongle was huge. It was a great brand until it got commoditized.
I never understood the utility. So could a 10$ HDMI cable?
I bought a Chromecast thinking it could play videos from a network drive like XBMP, but it couldn't and I thought it was beyond useless with its buggy and slow interface.
It's like comparing the PSP's un-included HDMI cable setup to the Switch's slick integration of an HDMI dock and saying "well actually Sony did the portable to TV tech first".
You plugged it in once to what used to be dumb TV's and in 2-3 presses I can have whatever was on my phone on my TV, with no fanagling with a USB to HDMI dongle into an HDMI cable, which may phone may or may not even support.
And once it was playing you didn't really have to manage the connection for Youtube; Your phone could die and it'll still play since it's ultimately not actually extracting the content from your phone's network.
> I thought it was beyond useless with its buggy and slow interface.
The older Chromecasts' didn't really have an interface once you set it up. I just casted from phone, waited 5 seconds and it was done. Honestly prefer my Ultra to the newer Google TV dongles precisely because there's no unnecesary middleman interface. My phone should and did manage all of that.
As a brand I’m of the opinion that “Chromecast” was a huge success. All non technical people I know basically call any stick/dongle and even devices like an Apple TV a “Chromecast”. For them, if you watch anything that isn’t linear cable TV (so: YouTube, Netflix etc.) on your TV you’re “casting”. And for a while Chromecast was fantastic because it turned any dumb TV into a smart TV.
Now that every TV has apps and even the older people watch more streaming than cable TV, sure, it is a good moment to say goodbye to the mental image of what Chromecast was. But if you measure success in tech by how many people outside of the “HN crowd” are familiar with a thing, Chromecast is right up there with something like Dropbox.
>It seems like the bare-bones experience of a Chromecast being is getting replaced with an Apple TV like experience.
Weird thing about this is the best thing about Chromecast is it’s not an Apple TV form factor and experience and the worst thing about Apple TV is it’s not a Chromecast style stick.
I just don’t see where a TV would even exist that doesn’t offer what’s in the box built in already, but I definitely know a lot of TVs where Chromecast or AirPlay just doesn’t work on the base unit.
Every "smart" tv is definitely spying on you. Your best defense is never setting it up or buying a dumb tv I'd you can still find them. Control your data! If you're going to surrender your data willingly to apple, google then fine that's a choice, but smart TVs like modern cars have no choice.
No one. No one is making a good non-smart TV. The shitty TVs have smarts in them to subsidize the price by spying on you, and the expensive TVs are not going to compete with less features, right? Oh, and why not make more money by spying on you as well?
If you want a modern TV with correct colours, HDR, and useful inputs, you have to stop yourself from connecting a smart TV to the internet. There's just no other way. Roku's OS is absolutely usable without ever configuring it for internet access, and my particular brand of choice, TCL, offers an option to update the OS with a USB stick.
I use my TV with an AV receiver, and HDMI-CEC switching means the TV remote is literally hidden away. The TV has no say in what's happening to it at all.
Yeah the whole reason I ever recommended a Chromecast to people was that it was basically dummy simple. You know how to watch Netflix or YouTube on your phone? Great, you know how to watch it on your TV too.
My mother who hates every piece of technology and gets frustrated to the point of tears when things don't work like they did yesterday was just fine with a Chromecast. There's no separate Chromecast to learn, manage, or deal with. It's, effectively, a way to mirror your phone to your TV.
I regularly recommended them to people even with Smart TVs and stuff. There were often bugs, UI issues, general confusion... "Just plug this thing in and then use your phone as a remote" added a lot of value.
I don't know why I'd ever want a "Google TV". For $100 what does this give me over the crappy Smart TV UI I've already got? Do I really want to deal with Google's privacy track record over Apple's to save $40?
>I have had two Chromecasts (the original and an Ultra) and I feel like both were hampered by the phone requirement.
I rarely was. Ultiamately I usually have some piece of tech on hand and I just wanted some way to get youtube on my dumb TV.
But I also get it. that tv casting has more or less been built into every modern smart TV (and we aren't getting many good dumb tv's these days). So focusing on something more robust instead of selling a cheap streaming stick seems inevitable.
Emailers are telling me this is more of a rebrand so I've replaced the submitted title "Google is killing Chromecast" with the unfortunately press-releasey original.
If anyone suggests a better title (i.e. more accurate and neutral, preferably using representative language from the article), we can change it again.
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 will just happen in the cloud...?), I'm not sure if that's an improvement.
That's reasonable. Although Chromecast also has a brand identity of dongle you plug into a TV for streaming. If you're something a lot different/more ambitious then rebranding isn't a bad idea.
I'm actually a big proponent of moving TV smarts out of the display just as I am in cars.
I travel quite a bit and I've never encountered one. Never even seen one at all. I've heard of Chromecast because I go on tech sites, but they're suspiciously absent in my bubble of reality. I'm an Android and Linux user too.
The protocol is baked into almost every TV sold now. Have you seriously never even tried it? Never wondered what that rectangle icon was in youtube videos on your phone, etc...?
Right, because no one buys them anymore as the feature is baked into their televisions already. They were popular originally but don't have a home. If it's just the hardware device you're talking about, sure. It's obscure now, which is why it's being cancelled.
What's frustrating in this thread is how many people are conflating the weird dongle product with the extremely successful streaming control protocol. Only the weird thing is being cancelled!
A quick Google says that 40M televisions are sold in the US every year, into a market with 130M households. So... a whole lot more often than once every decade and half.
I assume a lot new "households" are created every year. Once a stable household is established it would surprise me a bit if TVs were regularly repurchased.
The whole thread is about Google discontinuing a physical product, not a feature baked into TV's. I've never seen the product they're discontinuing IRL.
I had an AirPort Express back in 2004 timeframe that was precursor to Airplay that did beat Chromecast by close to 10 years with AirTunes. AirPlay came out in 2010. Then, in 2017, Apple released AirPlay 2.
Chromecast first gen was in 2013.
Apple actually beat Google on this one in terms of time.
How is a wireless audio technology comparable to chromecast? If it is, bluetooth audio streaming started in 1998, beating airport express by 6 years. And don't get me started on radio...
One important difference is that Airplay is much more of a screen or video mirroring protocol, while Google Cast is focused on the receiver driving presentation, with your mobile device only acting as a navigation source.
Practically, this means that you can take phone calls, hibernate your computer, kill a source app on your phone, leave the house entirely etc. with Chromecast without interrupting whatever's playing on a TV or stereo, while with Airplay, playback usually stops in these scenarios. Airplay is also a bigger battery drain as a result, in my experience.
At least Samsung and LG don't include them, and these seem to be the most popular brands in Europe as far as I can tell.
They both support AirPlay these days, I've never been able to use Google Cast natively with a TV here, which is a shame for my use cases (Netflix doesn't support it, and I generally don't like to have my phone connected to the TV via Wi-Fi for the entire duration of a movie).
Edit: Turns out LG is currently in the process of adding it, and Samsung seems to have support in some models as well, but it's definitely not ubiquitous.
It's interesting you mention upfront that you travel. Is that travel for work where you might be staying in corporate hotels?
I ask because when I have travelled for work, it's the corporate hotels that have often baked a Chromecast into their TV experience, even to the point of sorting out their wifi network so you're only able to cast to the screen in your room. Their splash screen offers "live TV" or the option to "stream from your phone".
They often don't shout about the fact that it's a chromecast doing the work, but the telltale standby screen that shows up when you're not casting something normally confirms it.
They’ve sold a hundred million of them and embedded it into millions of TVs. It’s not as mainstream as Chrome or Android but it’s far from a niche product, especially for people who aren’t old enough to have grown accustomed to using dedicated boxes attached to their TVs to watch everything.
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 speech-to-text on it or advanced video analysis, and processing it all down to a summary for you.
If this is what we can expect from "Gemini" technology, it's damning it with faint praise. Who even cares. Nobody has the problem of really wanting a summary of a season of TV, but they just can't get it because darn it all they lack access to super advanced AI. Nobody had that problem 10 years ago and they still don't. If I were them I'd scrub that off the marketing, it's a negative if it's anything.
> A $100 device is not spontaneously ingesting video, running speech-to-text on it or advanced video analysis, and processing it all down to a summary for you.
You're clearly underestimating the 2021 SoC in it. It does 20 GFLOPS!
Yeah -- I built a quick movie/show summarizer (easy to do with the latest models with larger than >50k token context window), I got literally 1 customer for $5 haha, but it was a fun little project to learn the various leading LLM APIs.
It's here: recapflix.com (and it's not at all perfect, due to a number of reasons...).
It was actually useful in the rare case that you wana skip an episode or get caught up on some obscure anime/show, but otherwise, meh.
My conspiracy theory is that renaming all products to generic names (Hangouts to Google Chat, G Suite to Google Workspace) are an attempt by Google to prevent regulators from splitting them out from the main company.
It's only a matter of time until Pixel gets renamed to "Google Phone".
That's funny when you consider the rename to Alphabet.
Edit: to clarify, since somebody downvoted me, I'm just saying it's funny that they refactored all their properties into multiple legal entities and now several years later might want to do the opposite. You can't expect consistent behavior from these companies over time.
> 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 that it's Google's version of an Apple TV, while "Chromecast" told you nothing except that maybe it had to do with a browser (which it didn't).
Chromecast was always a bizarre name to begin with, since it didn't really have anything to do with Chrome. Chrome wasn't necessary to use it, nor did it run Chrome for you.
If something that sells 100 million+ devices isn't "super popular", I don't know what is. And not even counting the millions of TVs that have it built-in (Hi-Sense, TCL, Samsung) the brand is pretty ubiquitous.
I was being generous and said "not even counting," but no despite the internal name change, most still maintain the "Chromecast Built-In" designation on their branding and sites which takes a mere second to Google and see.
remember this is Google -- don't worry, they'll be changing the name again in 2-3 years. Probably YouTubeCast or YouTube TV (yes they already have a "YouTube TV" but I wouldn't put it past them to combine/confuse the two things like they've done with Google Pay / GPay / Google Wallet / etc)
I really disliked my Chromecast...despite being able to output 4k, the OS was sluggish and it barely had storage to hold the streaming apps I was interested in using. I ditched it for the Apple4K.
IMO this is a part of the reason why they're dropping the Chromecast branding. The product is very different from the original Chromecast streaming stick. It is now mostly a cheap Google TV device.
I also quickly ditched mine. I mean it worked sorta fine - but the usability was absolutely terrible. Often apps lost connection with it so any requests to pause or resume the media was several seconds delayed. If I got a phone call I often wanted a quick way to pause my media but chromecast made this super inconvenient, slow and stressful when the phone is blurting out it's ringtone.
App support was also spotty at best.
In the end I realized that since I've already chosen between a rock and a hard place (went with the Apple ecosystem), I could just screenshare using an old Apple TV. This ended up working much better in practice (although lower quality video stream) than Chromecast. Today I don't cast much video anymore for some reason, not really sure why. I have an Apple TV 4K and just mostly use the native apps from various services. Having a remote to a system that is completely detached from your phone is much nicer usability wise IMHO.
Damnit. I'm so tired of buying Google products only to have them cancelled. I literally just bought chromecasts for my entire home less than 6 months ago.
That's it. I'm NEVER buying another google device again.
What difference does this announcement make to you? I am still using a 2013 Chromecast for some purposes. It does all the things it originally did, even though "support" for it ended a while back.
Looks like I'll be moving towards Roku, most of my friends use it and I've been using a Chromecast because I was gifted on. But the experience w/ Roku seems to be superior to Chromecast nowadays anyways.
Roku has always been pretty great -- simple, straightforward, limited UI clutter (source: have been a user since 2013).
However, lately they've been adding more and more suggested/sponsored content to the home screen. Most of these things can be turned off, and even with them on, it doesn't slow down the experience significantly (I'm looking at you, Fire TV) but it is a shame. I suppose they've got to make money somehow...
Got a Roku stick last year after two FireTV sticks bricked themselves. First thing I noticed was that the volume on the remote can only control Roku devices. Then there’s the ads that are creeping in everywhere, but I admit they do stay out of the way… for now.
Going back to AppleTV for my next device. I don’t like how search steers all results through Apple, but I can work around that. Plus I can use it as an exit node on my Tailscale network.
> First thing I noticed was that the volume on the remote can only control Roku devices.
Rokus can send volume/mute commands through CEC. The volume buttons on my Roku control my home theater receiver, they controlled the volume on a sound bar on a different TV, and they controlled the TV volume.
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.
Yes, they do have much less. They do not have two decades of email history, map/location data, photo libraries, advertising profiles on the web, etc...
Does it have the same level of content provider support, though?
Almost any app or content I've ever wanted to stream to my TV supports Google Cast on both iOS and Android, which definitely can't be said for my TV's native OS, Apple TV/Airplay, Miracast etc.
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.
I agree with your second paragraph for a lot of reasons and product lines of theirs. But -- I decided a while ago to bite the bullet and go whole hog on using Google everything for my personal life (for better or worse).
The decision was either to avoid them entirely or resign and buy into the ecosystem. I have a Pixel, my home uses Nest, I use their cloud storage personally, their AI, etc.
FWIW it is a better experience than using only a few of their products in isolation. At what cost, we will find out. But I imagine Google Streamer will be useful for people like me, the user group Google is presumably trying to expand.
Yeah, I'd emphasize this is for personal stuff only (doubt I'd build a startup on top of Flutter tomorrow).
It may be the product of how boring my personal digital requirements are but I haven't been burned yet by their many abandonments. I really only use pretty core services (Gmail/ Drive/Calendar, ChromeOS/Android/Pixel Watch, Google TV) that I don't anticipate going anywhere soon.
The biggest downside so far is overcoming the ethical dilemma of such a resignation. I'd prefer to use what's best in every case independently, but the value I put on convenience grows every year.
FWIW I was all in on Google years ago. But as features and products kept vanishing or degrading and being replaced with ad driven crap, it eventually drove me to swear off all Google products. The only one I still use is Workspace.
The problem is that Google makes it hard to go all-in on their products even when you want to.
I was an early user for Google Apps for Your Domain, which was a free version of what is now Google Workspace that you could use with custom domains. I signed up for Google Play Music with that account.
Then they introduced Google Family, with app sharing and a family plan for Google Play Music, but you couldn't use Google Workspace accounts as part of a family plan. So I went back to using a regular Gmail account, manually moving my playlists for Google Play Music, and repurchasing the handful of apps I wanted to be able to share with my kids.
Google bought Fitbit, and we got some Fitbit Ace watches for our kids. Then Google decided that Fitbit accounts needed to be converted to Google accounts, but the kids can't use their watches with their Android tablets anymore, because the Fitbit app won't let you log in to use your Ace (the kid watch) with a child account from a Google family. The watch designed for kids doesn't work with the account management designed for kids. My wife's Fitbit died and she was ready to buy the newer version of it, except that one doesn't work with the Fitbit app store because (presumably) they want people to buy the more expensive Pixel watches and use that completely separate app library.
Somewhere in there I had to switch my playlists from Google Play Music to YouTube Music. They also decided to start charging for the free Google Workspace plans, eventually relenting only if you solemnly promised it was only for personal use.
I'm the kind of person who should be a loyal Google customer, but I've been burned enough that my immediate response to a new Google product is to wonder what I would do if it suddenly disappeared.
While I'm not all-in on the ecosystem, I'm pretty far. It's still terrible.
I still can't "cast" YouTube audio to my Google Home Mini unless I use the Home Mini in Bluetooth mode (I have more reliable Bluetooth speakers for that) even as a YouTube Premium user.
My Nest devices are stuck in limbo between the Google Home and Nest apps; it's been like this for years.
Integrating new Google devices into Google Home tends to fail without helpful troubleshooting a few times before they succeed.
I refuse to upgrade my Nest Thermostat 1, even though it doesn't support needed features like the temperature sensors. I've also had to turn off all the learning because it decides I'm not home, and doesn't infer that I am home from my Google Wifi hubs.
> I still can't "cast" YouTube audio to my Google Home Mini unless I use the Home Mini in Bluetooth mode (I have more reliable Bluetooth speakers for that) even as a YouTube Premium user
YouTube Music casts toy Google Home Mini. Are you trying to watch YouTube on your phone but have the audio come out the speakers?
Yes, I prefer YouTube and use it for background audio when I'm not listening to podcasts. YouTube Music is a product trying to kludge way too much into a single app to be good at any one thing. It's an okay music player, decent podcast tool, and back YouTube secondary/audio only augmentation.
Microsoft's products are so incoherent they have certifications for navigating their offerings and pay. I don't think their consumer facing stuff is poorly thoguht out, but their business facing stuff is full of weird and changing names, discontinued and merged products.
Apple makes fancy five-course dinners for the wealthy. Google throws half-cooked ramen at the wall for the masses. It's not terrible, but you have to finish eating it before it falls off. Your favorite flavor won't be there next time, and they might be serving burritos instead, but at least your loyalty card still works.
Is there a replacement device out there for the ability to cast a tab or your full desktop to a TV? We use this functionality all the time and I would rather not deal with HDMI cords.
Miracast devices have pretty decent compatibility. Some TVs have it built in, but there are dongles that implement it as well. IIRC Microsoft has (had?) one that worked quite well.
Your Chromecast should still keep working. The replacement streamer device would still work too, or the last gen chromecast with google tv.
Apple TV also works if you have a Mac. Many TVs also have Chromecast built in. Miracast is another option but it's really terrible. Steam Link is another option. There are also wireless HDMI adapters.
Just this morning, I was chatting with a colleague about how much I love Chromecast and how relieved I am that it hasn't been discontinued. Then, an 3 hours later, I read this news, and it really bummed me out.
Honestly, I'm not sure which company frustrates me more right now. Updating apps on Google Play has become a nightmare compared to Apple, where review times can stretch to two weeks (sic). Plus, the google search is practically useless.
> Updating apps on Google Play has become a nightmare compared to Apple, where review times can stretch to two weeks (sic).
What do you mean by "(sic)" here? I'm used to seeing that in quotes to make it clear the quote is being reproduced exactly, but I've never seen it outside a quote.
In this case "premium" just means "expensive, right? What new features are there? AI summaries? I don't think there is anyone that would think AI summaries would be worth paying extra. But I do think people would pay more if there was a version that completely removed any and all AI integrations.
Yes -- it is very difficult to get a customer to pay for "AI summaries" for movies/shows especially if they are not bundled with anything else. I tried it about 6 months ago at recapflix.com (it's not perfect and we got 1 paying customer over like 3 months haha).
Like others are saying, this just looks like a rebrand. Hopefully this competes in performance with the 2019 Nvidia Shield TV Pro which is to date still the only streamer that performs well enough for high quality audio and video, but is starting to age (and no longer works with things like google home audio groups). If anyone knows of a comparable plex streamer let me know :)
612 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 382 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41164240
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...
Matter Cast in theory exists, though afaik Amazon's the only big power really pushing it.
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.
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.)
I also DGAF about battery life. If im watching TV, I have power nearby and im not moving anywhere. Id be charging my phone anyway.
With one solution, you get good quality playback (including anti-judder from your TV), correct color handling (e.g., 10-bit, HDR, Dolby Vision, whatever), HDMI CEC volume control from the “source” device, and remote control support on the TV.
With the other, you get recompressed content at random source resolution with improper frame pacing (TV cannot so anti-judder of a re-compressed 3:2 pulldown source), poor AV sync, a color space likely crushed to 8-bit with incorrect gamma, no integration and a device that is throwing its battery out the window - even if you don’t feel like you need your battery, Miracast still has no redeeming qualities for this usecase.
Miracast is great for presentations and other scenarios that strictly need screen mirroring though.
The beauty of the Google Cast protocol is that you can hand over meta-data as well as the actual source-URL to the receiver and it can initiate the stream directly.
> 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.
Google had a basic implementation in AOSP to kickstart things, but when being deployed to the market it turned out to be too cumbersome and complicated:
1. Each vendor had to certify his device for Miracast implementation with the Wi-Fi Alliance.
2. The Miracast receiver (sink) was buggy in many TV-sets and often didn't even work well with devices from the same vendor (i.e. Samsung Galaxy with Samsung TV)
3. Mobile Chipset vendors (Qualcomm, Mediatek) started to provide their own Miracast implementations to make more efficient use of their HW-architecture
4. Power-consumption of Miracast was too high (the device has to encode it's display content into a H.264 stream)
In the end Google saw the potential to deliver a good experience with a cheap dongle and took matters in their own hands. Miracast on AOSP was not maintained further because it was anyway not used by any major device-vendor (Samsung, LG, Sony, Motorola)
I use it every day and the experience is decent. Google just didnt like the competition from an open standard i guess. but, they dont control what vendors do.
I dont want a proprietary content aware equivalent. There is no beauty to sending metadata separately. There is beauty in having a dead simple way of mirroring whats on my phone that will play any kind of video.
No, as said, vendors add it themselves because the core functionality is now provided and maintained by the vendor of the device-chipset. A generic AOSP ("stock") implementation was proven to be inferior to a custom Miracast component tailored for i.e. Qualcomm DSP/GPU, that's why AOSP didn't continue maintaining it.
not to mention unnecessarily doubling your network bandwidth usage, introducing extra latency, using more power.
Has it? Then it must have left me behind somewhere.
My Chromecast does 4K, Dolby Vision, runs Android TV, has a usable remote. What needs to change? There's no newer A/V standard available anyway! I literally couldn't think of anything else I'd want it to do.
(Google could, of course, and it's somehow "AI", even though that probably just runs in the cloud anyway?)
That's what Google calls "Google TV" now, a product which still exists. During the transition they called the dongles "Chromecast with Google TV". Now the "Chromecast" part of it is discontinued and its all "Google TV".
So that's not going away? I really can't tell from TFA. The entire thing seems like a hot mess – the link I was hoping would explain why I'd want AI in my Chromecast successor is dead/404 as well in the "Google TV streamer" announcement (https://blog.google/products/google-nest/google-tv-streamer/).
From what I understand, this is the product they mean with "we're ending production of Chromecast, which will now only be available while supplies last."
They kept using the "Chromecast" brand just for dongles, and are now discontinuing all dongles in favor of a single new product.
My guess is that they reached a point where it's more economic to merge the GoogleTV reference design (ADT-3, ADT-4) with their Dongle-line and create a single box which serves both purposes...
You haven't been left behind. You've already made the transition.
In the old paradigm, the Chromecast was not the starting point for TV watching. Some other device, typically a smartphone, was. That's why the old Chromecasts did not include a remote control or have a home screen.
In the new paradigm, the Chromecast is the starting point. It has a remote. You can install apps on it, and it has a home screen to launch them from.
The first device of the new paradigm was still called a Chromecast, even though casting was no longer the core functionality. Now the brand is being made more consistent with what the devices in the new paradigm actually do.
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).
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)
[EDIT] I've just seen discussion on why it's not equivalent in response to this comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41171297
I would love to see something like Chromecast but open.
1. MDNS to find the display. 2. Send a URL to display. 3. Devices can send messages (with some way to tell them appart for security reasons, probably require and explicit opt-in to receive messages from non-initiator devi
This is similar to the current protocol except step 2 is to send an app ID registered and approved by Google rather than an arbitrary URL. (Or some pre-made apps for things like playing a video from a URL or screen mirroring)
RIP Mozilla Matchstick
From https://www.dial-multiscreen.org/dial/protocol-specification v2.2.1
This has exactly the same "pre approved" list problem as Chromecast. But it is actually worse because you can only launch apps that are already installed on the device. (Better in some ways because there may be advantages to native apps, but worse for openness and small competitors)
Open Screen Protocol exists and is very similar. It works and you can use it today (via the one and only reference implementation in the Chromium source tree)!
It's even pretty good & makes sense!
This was kind of part of the bargain for adding Presentation API to the web back in 2014/2015. Your site can itself trigger Chromecast! If that's true, then it seemed clear there should be a standardized way to talk to devices too, otherwise this wasn't really much of a standard. The same front-side/back-side happened with Web Push API for web sites which lead to the creation of a Web Push Protocol backend for actually sending push messages to the browser. It's not perfect but so far the web has somewhat stayed honest with APIs for the page having implementable backend protocols too. Presentation API sample (which oddly cant find my Chromecasts?): https://googlechrome.github.io/samples/presentation-api/
I really really wish there was some hardware support for this! I've been meaning to set it up locally & start using it some. Writing a native client seems not too absurdly hard.
Like any client-server protocol, it's useless if the devices and apps you use don't support it. Exactly zero of the apps I use to cast to my Chromecast supports Open Screen Protocol. And this isn't a case where I can just switch to a new client app. Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Jellyfin, etc. would have to all support it.
The really good news is that At least for many many apps, the effort to port to OpenScreemCast should be reasonably minimal. Chromecast for much of it's life has - under the covers - been web o ly, and rejiggering for the mild differences between Cast and OSP shouldn't be that wild.
Where-as Matter Cast requires native apps on the target device, and the app has to be pre installed to work.
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.
At their original price point, Chromecasts were pretty great, but why on earth would I pay the same as an Apple TV for something containing an SoC from 2021? I wasn't able to find reliable numbers, but performance seems to be lower by 1-2 orders of magnitude.
Though if you lose your remote in the cushions or whatever note that your iPhone can be used as a "hotter hotter colder colder" method to find the remote. Was surprised to find this feature. https://support.apple.com/en-ca/108371
It also supports a wide variety of wireless gaming controllers (including PS and xbox ones). The games aren't as good as a Switch or PS4, though.
The "best devices" lineup has been the nvidia shield pro, Roku ultra, and Apple tv 4k, with Roku being the cheapest at $99.
If you don't care about decoding support for all the different video formats, HDR10, dolby xy and z, etc., then these sorts of devices might not be for you.
The Shield is literally the only streaming device on the market that I'm aware of that does this. Without it, I wouldn't get the Atmos/DTS:X information passed on to my receiver when watching blu-ray rips.
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.
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-tv-streamer-processo...
heh...
Single core:
Fire Stick - 140
Shield TV - 279 (99% faster, twice as fast).
Tensor G1 (Pixel 6 Pro) - 1007 (619% faster, seven times faster)
A15 (Apple TV) - 1684 (1103% faster, 12 times as fast).
Multi-core:
Fire Stick - 491
Shield TV - 971 (98% faster, twice as fast).
Tensor G1 (Pixel 6 Pro) - 2541 (418% faster, five times faster)
A15 (Apple TV) - 4489 (814% faster, nine times as fast).
We're going to be seeing a lot of this in the next year or two.
The chat mess with Google Talk, Hangouts, Meet, Duo, etc. was quite sad to watch because Talk was a great product.
I hope they're happy with the zoo they have.
The sale of Domains was also massive imo. No reason for half of this and their internal incentivization needs dramatic revision.
Most usage is via a Chromecast Ultra. I have a Chromecast 4K with TV (i.e. newer device) but it was a backwards step from an experience perspective (covered by others elsewhere).
If Apple were run like Google, the iPhone would have been cancelled half a dozen times only to be resurrected as Apple Phone++ and Pocket AI, repeatedly investing in and torching brand awareness while distracting resources from product development to internal promotion and marketing the newest brand at the top of the escalator.
The current generation Chromecast (Chromecast with Google TV (4K)) was fast and responsive when it launched, but software updates have made it almost unusually laggy over time. Obviously the best solution here would be “just make the software fast again”, but not all the relevant software is written by Google, and the third party apps need to be fast even if they are not well-optimized. The previous hardware wasn’t up to the task, and the dongle form factor makes thermals a challenge regardless of what chip you put in. A set top box format + more capable chip + the general trend in higher component costs = a higher BOM cost. I think Google has correctly judged that many consumers are willing to pay a higher cost for a more responsive device.
The name change just makes sense, because the previous name was terrible. “Google Chromecast with Google TV (4K)” is… a mouthful. The “Google Chromecast” branding is also associated with the “casting” UX flow that was the only way to interact with the first 3 generations of Chromecast devices. The majority of interaction with the current generation devices is probably through the remote (including the voice search feature on the remote). “Google TV Streamer” conveys the use case much more clearly.
I get as frustrated as anyone else when Google kills products I use, but this clearly isn’t a case of that. They’re just releasing a new generation with some changes that plausibly meet consumer demand a bit better than the old version.
> Although the specifications for the MT8696 haven’t been published by MediaTek anywhere online, Amazon [which also used it in the past] says that the MT8696(T) variant of the chipset in the 2nd Gen model features a quad-core CPU clocked at up to 2.0GHz. The core design is ARM’s Cortex-A55
> The 2020 Chromecast with Google TV (4K) utilized Amlogic’s S905X3 SoC with four ARM Cortex-A55 cores clocked at up to 1.9GHz
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41171393
So both use 4 x Cortex-A55. The alleged "22% faster CPU performance" does sound strange, as the maximum clock speed is merely ~5% higher. Though it does have more RAM (4 GB instead of 2 GB).
They could have used a more recent SoC instead of the Mediatek from 2021, which would have been more efficient, but also more expensive. Making it a box instead of a dongle could also be motivated by better audio recording ability (for AI assistants), perhaps.
At the same time, the current generation Apple TV will absolutely smoke this thing in performance, even though the Apple TV is at the end of its refresh cycle.
Oh, so they're just rebranding and not making it a dongle anymore....
At least I definitely don't want more visible external boxes behind/next to my TV, especially if they don't even need line-of-sight to the remote since that's all Bluetooth anyway these days.
Exactly. Also: I just want to watch stuff. I don't want AI or smart-home features.
So it will no longer appeal to market in the same way.
So I think this means that Google sees that there's not enough profit in the low end Internet Smart features for HDMI anymore.
Yeah, that's right. I showed up here to mention I'm still bitter over Google Reader.
No, I'm NOT "getting over it" (contrary to the cease and desist letter I got from Google recently).
Chromecast is core to how my family’s television usage works. I got a free Chromecast recently and it’s a much worse UX than the ones I got many years ago.
What I wish for is for the ubiquitous Cast button found everywhere to be open and neutral and for there to be a whole market of devices that’ll work. It feels frustrating and kind of ugly that there’s an Apple version and a Google version, etc.
Sonos, take note.
I thought they just couldn't work out how to make casting work, like how they still haven't figured out RSTP.
I guess each time Google kills something and I remove one more part of my life from their ecosystem they are doing me the real favor.
Not as nice as Channels DVR (which also lets you record streams and will strip commercials), but one of the nicer streaming boxes for the money.
And also https://roon.app/en/ for music streaming software that can group up devices from a bunch of different manufacturers.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/google-wins-repriev...
Otherwise, you can DIY it with a bunch of old devices or Raspberry Pis and https://github.com/geekuillaume/soundsync
Oh so that was why they disappeared? Seriously, it's time to rework the entire patents system. You should only get a patent granted when you attach a reasonable (!) price tag and agree to non-discriminatory licensing.
Had I known Sonos would be like that, I wouldn't have bought their products. Their latest app also totally broke the speakers. Stay far far away from Sonos.
Before they locked Chromecast protocol down, it was easy to push audio from a linux pulseaudio sound server to Chromecast device(s).
The patchbay interface in soundsync looks neat. Also patch bay interfaces: BespokeSynth, HoustonPatchBay, RaySession, patchance, org.pipewire.helvum (GTK), easyeffects (GTK4 + GStreamer), https://github.com/BespokeSynth/BespokeSynth/issues/1614#iss...
pipewire handles audio and video streams. soundsync with video would be cool too.
FWIU Matter Casting is an open protocol which device vendors could implement.
I have had two Chromecasts (the original and an Ultra) and I feel like both were hampered by the phone requirement. Part of this is my house having kids without phone who would have liked to have access to Netflix, and part is due to my Apple TV use, which I use far more often.
I'm sure there will be some loss of functionality here, but hopefully it's with the benefit of a much better user experience.
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.
This is through standardized protocols.
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
The DIAL spec documents spend three pages talking about discovery and sixteen pages talking about state tracking, launching, HDMI-CEC, etc.
It's a pretty basic protocol spec since it mostly relies on things like UPnP for discovery and HTTP REST so a lot of complications are already defined in other specs.
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.
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.
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.
Now that they are at risk of being split up for their monopoly, and as they lose an Antitrust case for their search monopoly, they are probably looking to kill off the Chrome brand because Chrome is how they entirely dominated the web, warping it to their standards and killing more open standards in favor of their Proprietary technology.
Arguably the biggest advantage of Chromecast was just not having to deal with all that.
Google TV is a better "brand", IMO.
why didnt they just go for "Google TV" (2 words)
they also could have played a bit "Google TOP" (because its a table top device) , "Google S" (S for Streamer) , i think the 3 word "Google TV Streamer" , is function over form gone wrong
That's a whole headache I think Google is (wisely) trying to avoid here...
"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.
It'd be like if Apple decided to rebrand Macbook to be "Apple Laptop". Sure, it's accurate. It's also crap.
I think they gave out one from Logitech (with a keyboard!) at an I/O one year.
You get used to it. They also called the Apple smartwatch "Apple Watch" from the beginning, and nobody is complaining. So "Apple Laptop" or "Apple Phone" would be just as good.
The only market who wouldn't know is the same crowd that would never use a smart TV anyway.
Does it immediately tell you absolutely everything you likely need to know if you're not already buying an Apple TV? Yes.
I'd call it "Google TV Box" though. Streaming is too contrived and not everyone knows what it means. Xiaomi use the Box naming too and that seems to go down well.
The reason Google TV didn't win (and the reason why it kind of did) is that Google TV already won for something else closely related, which this is being associated with:
https://tv.google/
https://store.google.com/us/product/chromecast_google_tv
(If not, then: What am I missing?)
*enough profit
Remember that Google has sunset many products because those profits pale in comparison to search and advertising.
People just want to watch Netflix or Disney with minimum friction. A box that is twice the price of the competition, with questionably useful AI features does not seem a winning play.
This is a problem for the next exec after the one behind this has happily parachuted to his next position before the chickens come home to roost on things like "long-term costs" and "fit with the overarching corporate strategy".
The same way Roku does not make a profit from them.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ROKU/roku/profit-m...
It was a device that made it possible to cast video from your Chrome browser. When it was released in 2013 it reinforced the superior utility of Chrome which had just began to dominate browser market share.
Embedding the Google Cast protocol directly into video streaming apps and having the Chromecast brand name coexist alongside the Android TV and Google TV brand names made things confusing.
Now they are just killing the Chromecast branding for now. But they've been known to kill a brand only to resurrect it a few years later.
Most impotantly, it has ads!
Also now I have to pay extra to skip ads on prime :(
I'm thinking of getting an Apple TV but considering how expensive it is I'm waiting for the next version. I don't want to pay top dollar for the 2022 version.
But for whatever reason when I plug in the 4K with Google it's the annoying nagbot that refuses to do anything unless I'm logged in (not to mention my password is not exactly easy to type using the remote) and then it drags in my whole YouTube history and the device is useless and nags you to hell when not logged in.
It's so much easier and less insane to just use Roku. I can throw YouTube videos at the Roku without being logged in and the device works just fine. Google seems to be constantly changing things and I have no interest in playing wack-a-mole with whatever thing they decide to change this week.
Roku's just work and they rarely change. That trust just does not exist with Google's products.
The prompt to login whenever you cast to an arbitrary TV feels like a footgun. I don't want whatever community I'm watching with to know what the algorithm thinks I like. The distance between "annoying" and "embarrassing" is directly correlated to who is in the room to observe.
The latest one in my bunch has a remote and menus and stuff, and is what I presume y'all are talking about. I've seen it referred to as CCWGTV.
"Privacy" seems easy-enough and is not so dissimilar to "privacy" on any other shared computer: Just set up profiles. One for you, one or more for kids, one for guests, or whatever makes sense.
For your own profile, set a PIN. (The included d-pad remote makes PIN entry easy-enough.)
Aaaand... done?
Mine also does old-school phone-driven Chromecast stuff just fine with zero profiles logged in -- while it is just sitting there at the profile-select screen. In this mode, it accepts Youtube and Spotify and whatever else I throw at it.
---
Am I doing something wrong?
And it's about time. "Chromecast" was always a terrible brand IMHO, because it had utterly nothing whatsoever to do with Chrome, except that there happened to be a "Cast..." menu item in Chrome. But you can cast from lots of apps that aren't Chrome. It would have made just as much sense to call it "Gmailcast" -- that is to say, no sense at all.
"Google TV Streamer" isn't particularly memorable, but it's perfectly logical and intuitive. And it doesn't introduce confusion with a browser. Google wants the brand to be Google directly, not some sub-brand. Makes sense to me.
It's not at all clear to users though, isn't a meaningful name. And now as well as web there are also Android Custom Receivers from Chromecast. https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/web_receiver/basic https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/android_tv_receiver/...
It would have been interesting if there was an alternate path where Chromecast really did expose its underlying browser-ness better. If I could just tell my phone to cast hacker news and then scroll on my phone's screen. I wonder if that was ever considered.
Also note that ChromeOS was also a web-centered thing at the time, so there was some symbiosis with that. Both web powered tech platforms. But given the recent announcement that Google is killing ChromeOS & Android is the way forward for everyone, well, extra sensible that Chromecast has to go: finalizing/cementing the (imo unfortunate for all) cultural victory of Android-over-all at Google.
I get the lamentation of the final nail in the coffin of what was just a simple wireless HDMI dongle, and I agree that there's a real need for that. Having said that, I love my 4K Google TV Chromecasts. All I'd ever wanted was something that combined the Fire TV Stick and the Chromecast into one device, and this delivered perfectly. The compact form factor makes it easy to keep a spare in my backpack for whenever I might need it while away from home, which comes in handy often.
My problem with this is that it sounds like they're discontinuing a product that works perfectly well, and replacing it with something slightly worse (for my use case) at 2x the price. Granted, for now they are still selling the Chromecast, so they have time to introduce a future "Google TV Streamer Mini" that retains the form factor of the Chromecast. As long as they do that, I don't really care what they call it.
I bought a Chromecast thinking it could play videos from a network drive like XBMP, but it couldn't and I thought it was beyond useless with its buggy and slow interface.
You plugged it in once to what used to be dumb TV's and in 2-3 presses I can have whatever was on my phone on my TV, with no fanagling with a USB to HDMI dongle into an HDMI cable, which may phone may or may not even support.
And once it was playing you didn't really have to manage the connection for Youtube; Your phone could die and it'll still play since it's ultimately not actually extracting the content from your phone's network.
> I thought it was beyond useless with its buggy and slow interface.
The older Chromecasts' didn't really have an interface once you set it up. I just casted from phone, waited 5 seconds and it was done. Honestly prefer my Ultra to the newer Google TV dongles precisely because there's no unnecesary middleman interface. My phone should and did manage all of that.
Now that every TV has apps and even the older people watch more streaming than cable TV, sure, it is a good moment to say goodbye to the mental image of what Chromecast was. But if you measure success in tech by how many people outside of the “HN crowd” are familiar with a thing, Chromecast is right up there with something like Dropbox.
FYI Google stopped pushing critical security updates to the 1st gen Chromecast already. I'm not saying it joined a botnet already but maybe~ https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/1023...
- $30 HD Chromecast https://www.amazon.com/Chromecast-Google-TV-Streaming-Entert...
- $99 ("just") Streamer https://store.google.com/product/google_tv_streamer
Weird thing about this is the best thing about Chromecast is it’s not an Apple TV form factor and experience and the worst thing about Apple TV is it’s not a Chromecast style stick.
I just don’t see where a TV would even exist that doesn’t offer what’s in the box built in already, but I definitely know a lot of TVs where Chromecast or AirPlay just doesn’t work on the base unit.
If you want a modern TV with correct colours, HDR, and useful inputs, you have to stop yourself from connecting a smart TV to the internet. There's just no other way. Roku's OS is absolutely usable without ever configuring it for internet access, and my particular brand of choice, TCL, offers an option to update the OS with a USB stick.
I use my TV with an AV receiver, and HDMI-CEC switching means the TV remote is literally hidden away. The TV has no say in what's happening to it at all.
My mother who hates every piece of technology and gets frustrated to the point of tears when things don't work like they did yesterday was just fine with a Chromecast. There's no separate Chromecast to learn, manage, or deal with. It's, effectively, a way to mirror your phone to your TV.
I regularly recommended them to people even with Smart TVs and stuff. There were often bugs, UI issues, general confusion... "Just plug this thing in and then use your phone as a remote" added a lot of value.
I don't know why I'd ever want a "Google TV". For $100 what does this give me over the crappy Smart TV UI I've already got? Do I really want to deal with Google's privacy track record over Apple's to save $40?
I rarely was. Ultiamately I usually have some piece of tech on hand and I just wanted some way to get youtube on my dumb TV.
But I also get it. that tv casting has more or less been built into every modern smart TV (and we aren't getting many good dumb tv's these days). So focusing on something more robust instead of selling a cheap streaming stick seems inevitable.
If anyone suggests a better title (i.e. more accurate and neutral, preferably using representative language from the article), we can change it again.
Targeted use vs constant home inhabitants monitoring.
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 will just happen in the cloud...?), I'm not sure if that's an improvement.
> one that will be very visible next to a TV, and not out of sight behind it like its predecessor.
You're now advertising to anyone who visits your home.
But those that have at least subjectively/anecdotally seem pretty happy with it – so why kill it and start from scratch?
I'm actually a big proponent of moving TV smarts out of the display just as I am in cars.
"Cast" is a pretty ubiquitous term and, anecdotally, Chromecast is almost always the device I find when traveling.
Probably selection bias on my part, but I'd expect most people to be aware of Chromecast unless they're over the age of ~70 and fully Apple-oriented.
Seems like throwing away a perfectly well known brand.
What's frustrating in this thread is how many people are conflating the weird dongle product with the extremely successful streaming control protocol. Only the weird thing is being cancelled!
Chromecast first gen was in 2013.
Apple actually beat Google on this one in terms of time.
Come on man
Practically, this means that you can take phone calls, hibernate your computer, kill a source app on your phone, leave the house entirely etc. with Chromecast without interrupting whatever's playing on a TV or stereo, while with Airplay, playback usually stops in these scenarios. Airplay is also a bigger battery drain as a result, in my experience.
They both support AirPlay these days, I've never been able to use Google Cast natively with a TV here, which is a shame for my use cases (Netflix doesn't support it, and I generally don't like to have my phone connected to the TV via Wi-Fi for the entire duration of a movie).
Edit: Turns out LG is currently in the process of adding it, and Samsung seems to have support in some models as well, but it's definitely not ubiquitous.
I ask because when I have travelled for work, it's the corporate hotels that have often baked a Chromecast into their TV experience, even to the point of sorting out their wifi network so you're only able to cast to the screen in your room. Their splash screen offers "live TV" or the option to "stream from your phone".
They often don't shout about the fact that it's a chromecast doing the work, but the telltale standby screen that shows up when you're not casting something normally confirms it.
If this is what we can expect from "Gemini" technology, it's damning it with faint praise. Who even cares. Nobody has the problem of really wanting a summary of a season of TV, but they just can't get it because darn it all they lack access to super advanced AI. Nobody had that problem 10 years ago and they still don't. If I were them I'd scrub that off the marketing, it's a negative if it's anything.
You're clearly underestimating the 2021 SoC in it. It does 20 GFLOPS!
If I can get a movie summary from a real intelligence for free online, why would I bother with an AI generated summary?
It's here: recapflix.com (and it's not at all perfect, due to a number of reasons...).
It was actually useful in the rare case that you wana skip an episode or get caught up on some obscure anime/show, but otherwise, meh.
Who even needs this crap? Just watch the goddamn show, people.
It's only a matter of time until Pixel gets renamed to "Google Phone".
gPhone.
Edit: to clarify, since somebody downvoted me, I'm just saying it's funny that they refactored all their properties into multiple legal entities and now several years later might want to do the opposite. You can't expect consistent behavior from these companies over time.
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 that it's Google's version of an Apple TV, while "Chromecast" told you nothing except that maybe it had to do with a browser (which it didn't).
Chromecast was always a bizarre name to begin with, since it didn't really have anything to do with Chrome. Chrome wasn't necessary to use it, nor did it run Chrome for you.
That's it. I'm NEVER buying another google device again.
Going back to AppleTV for my next device. I don’t like how search steers all results through Apple, but I can work around that. Plus I can use it as an exit node on my Tailscale network.
Rokus can send volume/mute commands through CEC. The volume buttons on my Roku control my home theater receiver, they controlled the volume on a sound bar on a different TV, and they controlled the TV volume.
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.
I also have a smart TV, but the Roku has a lot of apps that the TV doesn't.
Short of having an always on camera and microphone, this is amongst the scummiest corporate spying behavior out there.
Edit: actually it appears to be "opt-in"
Almost any app or content I've ever wanted to stream to my TV supports Google Cast on both iOS and Android, which definitely can't be said for my TV's native OS, Apple TV/Airplay, Miracast etc.
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.
The decision was either to avoid them entirely or resign and buy into the ecosystem. I have a Pixel, my home uses Nest, I use their cloud storage personally, their AI, etc.
FWIW it is a better experience than using only a few of their products in isolation. At what cost, we will find out. But I imagine Google Streamer will be useful for people like me, the user group Google is presumably trying to expand.
Until, in a few years, there is another such blogpost, and it goes to the Google office in the sky.
Really, Google seems like possibly the worst ecosystem to go all in on, in that bits of it keep unexpectedly vanishing.
It may be the product of how boring my personal digital requirements are but I haven't been burned yet by their many abandonments. I really only use pretty core services (Gmail/ Drive/Calendar, ChromeOS/Android/Pixel Watch, Google TV) that I don't anticipate going anywhere soon.
The biggest downside so far is overcoming the ethical dilemma of such a resignation. I'd prefer to use what's best in every case independently, but the value I put on convenience grows every year.
We already know. Your privacy.
I mean, it is quite a leap to ungoogle totally, but having a Nest listening 24/7? And everything else?
Aren't you worried Google will just lock you out someday?
I was an early user for Google Apps for Your Domain, which was a free version of what is now Google Workspace that you could use with custom domains. I signed up for Google Play Music with that account.
Then they introduced Google Family, with app sharing and a family plan for Google Play Music, but you couldn't use Google Workspace accounts as part of a family plan. So I went back to using a regular Gmail account, manually moving my playlists for Google Play Music, and repurchasing the handful of apps I wanted to be able to share with my kids.
Google bought Fitbit, and we got some Fitbit Ace watches for our kids. Then Google decided that Fitbit accounts needed to be converted to Google accounts, but the kids can't use their watches with their Android tablets anymore, because the Fitbit app won't let you log in to use your Ace (the kid watch) with a child account from a Google family. The watch designed for kids doesn't work with the account management designed for kids. My wife's Fitbit died and she was ready to buy the newer version of it, except that one doesn't work with the Fitbit app store because (presumably) they want people to buy the more expensive Pixel watches and use that completely separate app library.
Somewhere in there I had to switch my playlists from Google Play Music to YouTube Music. They also decided to start charging for the free Google Workspace plans, eventually relenting only if you solemnly promised it was only for personal use.
I'm the kind of person who should be a loyal Google customer, but I've been burned enough that my immediate response to a new Google product is to wonder what I would do if it suddenly disappeared.
I feel much more like The Product is the Consumer with G, vs Apple.
To me Apple product- / business-approach seems torn between capturing the audience with delight vs high prices to achieve profit.
An easy choice that you somehow managed to get wrong?
I still can't "cast" YouTube audio to my Google Home Mini unless I use the Home Mini in Bluetooth mode (I have more reliable Bluetooth speakers for that) even as a YouTube Premium user.
My Nest devices are stuck in limbo between the Google Home and Nest apps; it's been like this for years.
Integrating new Google devices into Google Home tends to fail without helpful troubleshooting a few times before they succeed.
I refuse to upgrade my Nest Thermostat 1, even though it doesn't support needed features like the temperature sensors. I've also had to turn off all the learning because it decides I'm not home, and doesn't infer that I am home from my Google Wifi hubs.
YouTube Music casts toy Google Home Mini. Are you trying to watch YouTube on your phone but have the audio come out the speakers?
And Google, too.
I feel like I am the product.
Apple TV also works if you have a Mac. Many TVs also have Chromecast built in. Miracast is another option but it's really terrible. Steam Link is another option. There are also wireless HDMI adapters.
Honestly, I'm not sure which company frustrates me more right now. Updating apps on Google Play has become a nightmare compared to Apple, where review times can stretch to two weeks (sic). Plus, the google search is practically useless.
What do you mean by "(sic)" here? I'm used to seeing that in quotes to make it clear the quote is being reproduced exactly, but I've never seen it outside a quote.