10 ms·

Google Cast is now built-in to Chrome

240 points by jdimov10 10y ago

biot 10y ago
"people have casted more than 38 million times from Chrome, watching and listening to more than 50 million hours of content." So Google is monitoring your watching habits. What other information do they collect as part of this? Are these details documented in a privacy policy somewhere? The setting chrome://flags/#disable-cast-streaming-hw-encoding only appears to toggle hardware encoding or not. Can it be disabled altogether?
- chipperyman573 10y ago
  Generic usage time is probably the least surprising thing google is tracking.
- andrewguenther 10y ago
  There is a "Automatically send usage statistics and crash reports to Google" checkbox right in the settings. It even asks you during the install. Just uncheck the box to disable. They also recorded this data as part of the Chrome extension, not natively. If you want to see more about the native metrics Chrome sends to Google, check out "chrome://histograms/"
niftich 10y ago
There was formerly a Google-made addon for this. Now it's integrated into Chrome. There are two features here: - Chrome can stream its renderer output to a 'Google Cast'-supporting stream sink, like a Chromecast. This option is buried in the hamburger menu. - websites can be coded against a JS library that's implemented by Chrome [1][2]. Then the 'stream to...' menu is shown as the 'cast' icon near the address bar. [1] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/reference/chrome/ https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/reference/chrome/ [2] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender
RevBooyah 10y ago
All in an effort to reduce its memory footprint...
- gkoberger 10y ago
  It's not all about memory footprint; it's sometimes about just working for the grandmother who buys a $35 Chromecast from Best Buy.
  - KeyBoardG 10y ago
    Couldn't they just have the extension pre-installed with the ability to remove?
    - Frank2312 10y ago
      Then you get people hating "bloatware" and complaining.
  - jawns 10y ago
    And sometimes it's not all about that either, but about vendor lock-in.
    - gkoberger 10y ago
      Sometimes "making it just work" and "avoiding vendor lock-in" are incompatible. Plus, it's literally called "Chromecast."
      - kevincox 10y ago
        The device itself runs chrome. So I don't think of the sender as the influence in the name. Plus chrome has a good mind-share which helps marketing.
    - knz 10y ago
      Is it vendor lock in if you're casting services like Netflix etc? You can use many different devices to watch your content. We've had a Chromecast since the first version and it has always worked well (with the exception of Netflix lately). I recently purchased a Sony Blue Ray player and was surprised to find Chromecast built in to that.
joemccall86 10y ago
Assuming they drop support for the Chromecast add-on, doesn't this effectively eliminate the ability for other browsers that can use chrome extensions to cast to a Chromecast? (e.g., Opera, Vivaldi, maybe Chromium)?
- pavanky 10y ago
  That is only going to be a problem if they do not upstream the changes to Chromium.
  - andybak 10y ago
    That's actually a very important question. Is Google opening up casting in the widest sense to 3rd party clients? I know there was some push in this direction when it was launched ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_and_Launch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_and_Launch ) but I seem to recall hearing that there is now more to Google Cast than DIAL. Does anyone know how interoperable this all is?
    - vbernat 10y ago
      DIAL/SSDP is not used anymore (except for legacy apps, like the Youtube one). Now, this is mDNS (good) and proprietary protobuf protocol. There is no documentation for this but several people have reversed-engineered the stuff from the source code of Chromium and the extension to get third-party client (third-party Chromecast is not possible since there is a signature mechanism for clients to check). I have done such an implementation here: https://github.com/vincentbernat/nodecastor https://github.com/vincentbernat/nodecastor (but not really maintained).
      - andybak 10y ago
        That's troubling. Has anyone got any sense about whether interoperability is merely neglected or whether there's strategic reasons for its abandonment (either from Google itself or via pressure from partners with 'premium content')
      - 10y ago
obilgic 10y ago
So now its called Google Cast, not Chromecast?
- lowmess 10y ago
  Google Cast is the technology, Chromecast is the device. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - Frank2312 10y ago
    At first, it was all Chromecast. The API was even called the Chromecast API. They changed it to Google Cast last March [0]. [0] http://www.techtimes.com/articles/143386/20160323/google-rebrands-chromecast-as-google-cast-heres-the-reason-for-the-name-change.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/143386/20160323/google-reb...
    - criley2 10y ago
      The person said the device was still called Chromecast. https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chromecast/ https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chromecast/ https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chromecast/tv/#?discover https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chromecast/tv/#?discover Google is still branding the device as Chromecast and still heavily using the term in the marketing for the actual device. Also, other companies make Google Cast supported hardware, such as the NVidia Shield. https://shield.nvidia.com/blog/what-is-googlecast-chromecast https://shield.nvidia.com/blog/what-is-googlecast-chromecast
      - Frank2312 10y ago
        I understood that. I was just clarifying for obilgic by explaining that he wasn't mistaken until more recently when Google rebranded the API.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mrrsm 10y ago
gscott 10y ago
Looking at WireShark last night Google Cast was reaching out to Google every 30 seconds. I narrowed it down to my web browser, removing it from the toolbar stopped it.
- andybak 10y ago
  Assuming some of the logic for determining whether a page is castable (or what options to offer) reside server-side then I can imaginez why this might be necessary. However it also might be poor coding. Was it onerous in terms of resources - or was there any hint of nefarious behaviour? My suspicion is many people will assume the latter despite the rather neutral tone of your post. Therefore I'd be interested to hear more detail.
  - gscott 10y ago
    I have been interested in the Hacking Team leak of spyware and hacking tools. I found in the documentation taken from the hacking team website that when you run Wireshark their spyware looks for that and won't install. I have heard of wireshark before but never tried it, once I had it I saw that google chromecast going on it is like a beacon telling Google my ip address over and over again. Seemed like a bad thing. Maybe not all totally logical, why bother, but being logical all of the time is boring!
sfifs 10y ago
So will it work on Chrome for Android? It's not been available there yet.
- Frank2312 10y ago
  It has been available for quite a while, but only for videos (they added a button in the video player). If you want to cast a tab, while it's not the optimal solution, you can cast your whole screen using the quick settings tile.
microcolonel 10y ago
If this means it's in the Chromium source tree, I'm very happy. Then there is an open source Google Cast client maintained by Google proper. And it looks like that's exactly what they've done. https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/media/cast/?q=cast&sq=package:chromium https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/media/cast/?q=cast&sq=p... No more needing to guess how to implement non-deprecated versions of the API when integrating with other players.
- vbernat 10y ago
  This part is here since quite some time (since the introduction of the "new" protocol, two years ago). It is not the complete picture since it's only the low-level view (mDNS and protobuf). It's not sufficient to build a client since you still have to figure out the content of the messages. The gap is the extension that was provided until now (as a minified JS).
  - microcolonel 10y ago
    Ahh; that explains why performance wasn't awful all this time.
chrissnell 10y ago
It seems like Cast would be an inferior way to stream HD content to a TV for many users. If the source host is wifi-connected, you're tripling the amount of traffic that's passed through your access points: once from the content source (e.g. Netflix) to the laptop via the AP, then presumably from the laptop to the AP and back out to the Chromecast device.
- Gurrewe 10y ago
  This is not the case for apps such as Netflix, YouTube, and HBO. They all stream directly to the Chromecast from your internet connection, your browser or app on your phone just acts as a remote.
- IanCal 10y ago
  That's not how it's done. That's a complete fallback. For Netflix what happens is your browser tells the cast device what URL to go to to play the content. Your browser does not need to steam the video to the cast device. It can fall back to that so you can cast anything, however.
  - ihsw 10y ago
    This is true but there are a couple caveats, one being the device playing the content has to already be authenticated properly. You cannot simply go near a Cast-enabled device and start playing your stuff, unless I am mistaken. If that is the functionality then that would be terrifying as I would be handing my credentials to this Cast-enabled device.
    - Frank2312 10y ago
      Not sure if it works with desktops/laptops, but there is a guest mode (disabled by default) in the settings (on the Android app) that allows anyone to add thing sto the player queue. Only app I know for sure it works is Youtube. I'm not sure what other app handles it, maybe GPM and Spotify.
    - sarnowski 10y ago
agumonkey 10y ago
I don't know if it's related but chromecast was a bit buggy. Reboot level buggy.
- mSparks 10y ago
  videostream mobile and chromecast for the win.
- ihsw 10y ago
  I have a Roku and casting YouTube and Netflix works great. One caveat is Netflix doesn't autoplay to the next episode after casting a video. I really wish it had Google Play Music though.
  - andrewpi 10y ago
    Google Play Music support was one of the main reasons I added a Chromecast to my setup. It's a frustrating gap in the wide variety of content that Roku can handle.
Vexs 10y ago
Can't say I'm surprised. It's built into android now too, and the cast extension has been showing a lot of change recently.
rektide 10y ago
Looking forward to some standardization/interop coming out of this. There's Presentation API[1], which spec's a web API, but that still leaves open the question of coordination between a controller (browser) and display. Chrome's working on it[2], and I'd guess would target Cast, so web pages might be able to request their own casting, but it doesn't seem like anything other browsers could compete/cooperate openly with atm. [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/presentation-api/ https://www.w3.org/TR/presentation-api/ [2] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=component:Blink%3EPresentationAPI https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=component...
spike021 10y ago
Not sure how related this is, but my parents have a one or two year old Samsung "Smart" HDTV. It doesn't have Chromecast built in, but it does have Youtube, Netflix, and a few other "apps". I thought it was really cool one time when I was visiting during a SpaceX launch and experimental sea landing because I was able to swap from watching live via Youtube on my laptop to casting it to their HDTV. That was just by pressing the cast button and selecting their TV, which was automatically in the list without me doing anything. It's awesome that Google's made this more convenient and I think it'll be something useful for a lot of people.
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  Those are YouTube-specific hacks, as I understand it. My Oppo Blu-Ray player also shows up as a cast-to destination in the YouTube application, but it doesn't show up anywhere else that has the casting ability.
  - kevincox 10y ago
    I believe that this is the DIAL (http://www.dial-multiscreen.org/ http://www.dial-multiscreen.org/) protocol. I know Netflix and YouTube use it, as well as I presume others. Personally I don't think it is as cool as Google Cast as it requires an app/server installed on the target, where as Cast can open any website.
  - spike021 10y ago
    Oh, in that case I had no idea what I was talking about. Still a pretty useful 'feature' in any case. Carry on...
denzil_correa 10y ago
I am unable to mirror Chromecast from my Mac. Basically, it mirrors the video but does not mirror the audio.
- chatmasta 10y ago
  Assuming you're talking about casting from a chrome tab, I thought i had this issue, but it's a simple fix. After you start casting, click the cast button again. You should see a volume slider that you can adjust.
  - denzil_correa 10y ago
    It is not a question of volume. It just does not play on the TV. Here's the error I get. http://imgur.com/a/Hpzmb http://imgur.com/a/Hpzmb
    - chatmasta 10y ago
      Weird. I'd take a look at your Mac audio settings (System Prefs -> Sound -> Output) and any weird applications you've installed with access to sound output. Also try quitting all apps except chrome and see if the problem persists.
      - denzil_correa 10y ago
        I have no apps that have access to the sound output. The problem persists even if I run ONLY Chrome. I am not the only one - you can see such an issue on the Chromecast support forums for many users. I have tried all recommended solutions like media router enable/disable etc. including using the Canary version. No luck! I have also raised this with the Chromecast support team like 2 weeks ago. I haven't heard from them since then.
    - unfocused 10y ago
      I think as of this July post, you can't send audio when mirroring your Desktop from a Mac: https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chromecast/jGSayxcIng4/30jGuullCwAJ https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chromecast/jGSayxcIng... "Grace Y. said: Hello, Thanks for your patience. Currently, audio is not supported when casting your desktop from a Mac computer/laptop. However, casting a tab does support audio. We're always looking for ways to improve, so your feature request has been duly noted. Best, Grace"
balls187 10y ago
Thank you for the extra and unnecessary bloat on the main browser I use for work.
- azinman2 10y ago
  Safari has gotten quite good, btw, if you're on a mac. I mentioned this to a guy on the original Chrome team, and he said he wouldn't be surprised if it were faster now.... Chrome used to be all about speed but now it's about features.
  - dandandans 10y ago
    Safari dev tools kills adoption for me, specifically the styles inspector and the lack of an individual input/focus state for the property and value.
- rocky1138 10y ago
  Does Chromium include this "feature" ? Would be nice to have a barebones Chrome.
chatmasta 10y ago
For anyone who hasn't seen it, check out the "peerflix" project on github. It's an amazing way to stream torrents, and you can easily cast them from chrome. Basically you just do: peerflix 'magnetUrl' And then navigate to http://localhost:8888 http://localhost:8888 and cast the tab. Unfortunately it only works with MP4. There may be some workarounds with an ffmpeg command in the middle, but I haven't experimented with it much.
- paavokoya 10y ago
  Although I've been waiting for wireless screen-sharing between TV and PC for a long time, that sounds much more difficult than a simple HDMI cable to my laptop. It's actually one of the reasons I continue to buy laptops.
  - zackbloom 10y ago
    Just to point out, the 'difficult' step here is really the torrent download. If you already have the file locally, you can send it to your tv in a couple clicks using Videostream. Assuming everything works as you hope, it's more convenient than plugging in a cable for me at least.
    - paavokoya 10y ago
      The thing about chromecast is the need of a local wi-fi connection. Which I don't have. It's a shame bluetooth isn't more capable in this department.
      - tracker1 10y ago
        I think what may drive that will hopefully be better auto UX interfaces for devices...
- bduerst 10y ago
  Put.io will do this too and even convert to mp4 for you, but it costs $9/mo.
Angostura 10y ago
Anyone know if this includes the iOS version?
- Frank2312 10y ago
  You can't cast a browser window, but you can cast videos : http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/google-adds-chromecast-support-for-ios-chrome-app/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/google-adds-chrome...
tiles 10y ago
Since Google Cast has been open-sourced (upstreamed to Chromium), does this make it the de-facto alternative to Miracast? My Roku supports screen mirroring, but the fact that apps and companies are more keen on supporting ChromeCast has been frustrating.
a_thro_away 10y ago
It appears that Google will eliminate Chrome "packaged apps" in the next year; do I understand these to be locally installed apps? (I don't know Chrome). All apps after that must be on (a service?) the web. What could be the reason behind this?
- SquareWheel 10y ago
  Chrome is deprecating Chrome Web Apps in favor of native Web Apps. Essentially it's a push towards a more open web now that the APIs have caught up. It really has nothing to do with services.
eof 10y ago
Since this has happened my (gen 1) chromecast experience has gone almost totally to crap. The built in functionality is supposed to be smart about down scaling for wifi speed, and thus has removed all options to do it manually; unfortunately it utterly fails (I believe because wifi speed is fine but the bitrate is too high for the hardware). Lots of people don't like this update. https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chromecast/5IG1ClAapLc/3pCqFStfEAAJ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chromecast/5IG1... Streaming from my android is also much worse, with high bitrate streams that I used to consume regularly no longer working at all (e.g <1 fps). I have been extremely happy with my chromecast until the last few months, and it honestly has become something I really dislike now.
flavor8 10y ago
Any chance for "reverse cast"? I would love to be able to cast from supported apps in my phone to a tab in my browser.
- piquadrat 10y ago
  Vysor is pretty much that. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vysor/gidgenkbbabolejbgbpnhbimgjbffefm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vysor/gidgenkbbabo...
rblatz 10y ago
I'm hoping that the Sonos event tomorrow includes an announcement about supporting the audio portion Google Cast.
- echelon 10y ago
  How open is Sonos' API? I've been thinking about investing in some of their audio hardware.
  - jrockway 10y ago
    There is a PulseAudio extension that writes to both Sonos speakers and Chromecast: https://github.com/masmu/pulseaudio-dlna https://github.com/masmu/pulseaudio-dlna DLNA is some sort of standard, maybe that's what Sonos uses. I personally just use their phone app though.
    - rblatz 10y ago
      That is an awesome find, thanks!
  - rblatz 10y ago
    Not very, but I they've been opening up more. Just today they announced they were adding spotify connect support, and amazon echo voice control support.
leeoniya 10y ago
remembering my wtf from debugging phantom console errors: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24490323/google-chrome-cast-sender-error-if-chrome-cast-extension-is-not-installed-or-usi http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24490323/google-chrome-ca...
jeffdubin 10y ago
Nice job, thank you! Now... how can I disable it? Next time I'm on a public wifi network, this is going to be sending out probes for Chromecast devices, and it's only a matter of time before someone finds an exploit.
- discreditable 10y ago
  > only a matter of time before someone finds an exploit. Chrome is looking ripe for exploitation. IIRC the default install includes an mDNS responder. Check out the guy who has every Chrome instance on his network crash at the same time: https://redd.it/4xej0p https://redd.it/4xej0p
mashlol 10y ago
I really want a feature that would allow me to cast from my phone to my desktop. I have a big TV plugged into my desktop but I can't cast to it from my phone, I have to remote in and manually control the desktop, it's painful.
- mappu 10y ago
  Windows 10 added a built-in Miracast receiver, that works well with Android 6.
kelnos 10y ago
I'm still really disappointed that the Cast protocol is effectively closed, and Google only supports casting from Chrome, Android, and iOS. I think Google is really shooting themselves in the foot regarding adoption. I'd love to have a command-line Cast client for Linux, integration into pulseaudio, a Firefox Cast extension, a native UI (non-browser) video player, etc. Sure, some people have reverse-engineered the newer protocol, but I've never gotten any of the unofficial clients to work reliably (and some just flat-out don't work at all).
- colemickens 10y ago
  There are alternative clients, it's the receiver side that is locked down. For example: https://github.com/xat/castnow https://github.com/xat/castnow
  - kelnos 10y ago
    Never got it to work with anything, video, audio, images. The ChromeCast screen changes as if it's loading something, but it just sits there forever and nothing plays.
    - lokapian 10y ago
      firewall maybe?
- niftich 10y ago
  Google's not shooting themselves in the foot because: - Google Cast is not a general-purpose streaming protocol, even though it is designed to mimic that UX to a casual user - Cast provides some features like 'ad breaks' [1] that are valuable to content providers and aggregators which you wouldn't find in a general-purpose streaming protocol, making it more likely that those who want these features will make their streaming app Cast-compatible - The Cast SDK comes with a TOS [2] that's a rather enlightening read - You have to register your application with Google if you're developing a Cast sender [3], or if you're developing a Cast receiver and don't want to use their Default Receiver [4] (presumably, because you're building your own). Google's building an ecosystem here. This isn't Miracast or WiDi or even AirPlay, although kudos to them for making everyone think so. [1] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/ads https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/ads [2] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/terms https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/terms [3] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender#setup https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender#setup [4] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/receiver_apps#choose-a-receiver https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/receiver_apps#choose...
realityking 10y ago
I love Chromecasts and brining Google Cast into Chrome made me quite happy since the integration with Hangouts (you can cast a tab into a hangout if the meeting is part of your Google Calendar) is terrific. However as someone who helps out with the company's network, they are infuriating: - They ignore the DHCP given DNS Servers instead using Google's. I'm sure the same is true for NTP though I haven't bothered testing that. - They use mDNS and DNS-SD but not DNS-SD Wide Area Discovery. This makes subnetting more difficult and increases broadcast traffic quite a bit. - Not a complaint, more a wish, but a PoE version of the Ethernet adapter would be immensely helpful.
- hackuser 10y ago
  OT: If someone wanted to block connections to Google's DNS servers, can it be done reliably? Is there a known, static range? AFAIK Android also uses Google's DNS servers, and it's hard coded into the OS, and the client pings the server before any software firewall can load at boot. (Allow me to reemphasize: AFAIK; if someone knows more I'd appreciate it.)
  - viraptor 10y ago
    I don't know how the mobile networks configure the dns, but on WiFi android uses whatever dns server is advertised via dhcp.
    - izacus 10y ago
      Android yes, Chromecast no. It's hardcoded to defeat DNS-level location spoofing for Netflix and similar services.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    You can capture all DNS outbound (port 53) traffic not to/from your local DNS server and redirect it to your local/internal DNS server if you really wanted to. This is often done in order to jail/freeze all traffic until authenticated as well as whitelist certain traffic for the purpose of authentication.
Nullabillity 10y ago
> and partnered with other manufacturers to make Cast-enabled TVs and speakers. WTF? Just publish the damn API already.
skrowl 10y ago
I wish I could easily cast from Firefox or another privacy-respecting browser
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  There should be a campaign to call Chrome "Google Browser" to make it clear just how tight the connection is. A lot of more-tech people would have a slightly harder time saying they use GBrowse than Chrome.
israrkhan 10y ago
Few months ago, I bought a Nexus 5x assuming that it will support Miracast (like Nexus 5 did). I was very disappointed to know that Google dropped support for Miracast. re-enabling Miracast support was just a matter of changing a line in a config file. However that required rooting the device. Dropping support for standard protocols and forcing users to use their proprietary stuff? what happened to their corporate moto "Don't be evil".
- rektide 10y ago
  Really appreciate that Intel's been working on a Miracast receiver for Linux. Been super sad that Linux has been so far behind on the Miracast & Wifi-p2p fronts. https://01.org/wds https://01.org/wds
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Damnit Google! The 5x also doesn't have SlimPort or MHL support (when I found an adapter that worked well for the 4 and 5, HDMI out was fantastic) It may be that they found that Miracast just doesn't work well enough. I've got all sorts of Wifi gear and I can't get my Moto X Style to stream via Miracast reliably (to an Xbox One as a client). The Nexus 5 streams reliably but drops / stutters about once every two minutes, making music streams pretty much unusable. Back to a Raspberry Pi, I think.
johnnyo 10y ago
I hope Amazon FireTV supports this soon, or supplies a client. I've already got several of these sticks, and I'd love to be able to cast a tab up from somewhere on my network.
vertis 10y ago
Recently I moved house. I had to wait 6 weeks for the internet to be connected (first world problem). While I was waiting for the connection I inevitably tried to fall back on local content and discovered, much to my discontent, that my Chromecast wouldn't work at all without internet, even when I was trying to play local content. I've been less happy with it ever since.
surlyadopter 10y ago
" In the past month alone, people have casted more than 38 million times from Chrome, watching and listening to more than 50 million hours of content." Apologies for the stupid question, but how exactly does Google know this? Is there some "send statistics home" function in the browser?
- corobo 10y ago
  Yes it's one of the first things it asks you when you install it https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/96817?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/96817?hl=en-GB
greggman 10y ago
Chromecast if left on (using the included power adapter) will use about 14gig of bandwidth downloading images for its background that you can not turn off. As someone on a metered MiFi that's a no go.
- bigiain 10y ago
  Seriously? That really says something about the people who developed and tested these... (Something along the lines of "Hey, maybe you should try getting out of the Google campus/dorms occasionally, possibly even out of the Bay Area, and see how the world works for non-Google employees…") Chromecast - only $35![1] smallprint [1] requires unlimited highspeed broadband. May use several times it's purchase price in bandwidth per month if your employer doesn't provide free Google Fibre to your home.
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    I've posted at least once before about this. Google, Microsoft and a lot of other companies really don't think about "low" bandwidth (<20 megabit downstream) or situations where you're not always connected. Props to Facebook for having "2G" day. I hope it still happens. * Dropbox is meant to have a LAN sync but fails back quickly to syncing from their servers. There's no way to debug why it isn't using other hosts on your LAN * OneDrive has no LAN sync at all * There's no way to debug Windows 10's LAN update sharing if it fails. * Windows 10 will default to uploading partial updates to other users on the Internet (bittorrent style) * Windows 10 will let you set a Wifi connection as "metered" and actually behave quite well (deferring updates, driver downloads and OneDrive data), but there's no way to set Ethernet networks as metered, outside of a registry hack. * Google not supporting SD cards in the Nexus line (yes, I know about the performance issues, I own several >$50 SD cards that are trash). Mobile data is expensive. * It took Google until 2016 to offer offline caching of YouTube videos, and even then you have to pay them for the privilege * Microsoft's newer .NET and Powershell stuff download >50 megabytes of dependencies from NuGet.org and MyGet.org. Offline caching is possible, but maybe not on Linux
    - bigiain 10y ago
dingo_bat 10y ago
The time is coming for me to switch back to Firefox.
dvcrn 10y ago
I was surprised to hear that not many people knew that Safari does something similar (kind of) with AirPlay. A lot of videos and content (on YouTube for example) can be Airplayed when using Safari, but not when using Chrome or Firefox.
ForFreedom 10y ago
Can I cast a video playing on vlc or is it only from the browser?
- urmish 10y ago
  There is a command on unix for this https://alan-mushi.github.io/asap/2015/03/21/vlc-stream-to-chromecast.html https://alan-mushi.github.io/asap/2015/03/21/vlc-stream-to-c... vlc -vvv ./file.mp4 --sout "#chromecast{ip=192.168.1.4}" You can find out the ip of your chromecast with the command "arp -a" and it should list Chromecast as one of the devices if its switched on and on the same wifi Only works with VLC nightly builds 3.x.x. Also it is not very stable but gets the job done if you don't care about subtitles and scrolling through the video frequently. THe best option is plex (works for many file formats). Second best option is videostream extension on Chrome (not on chromium). But videostream doesn't support all file formats. They keep updating though.
  - ForFreedom 10y ago
    hmm.. Could I mirror my macbook screen?
askvictor 10y ago
And yet, despite Google making a strong play for the education and corporate markets, Chromecast still doesn't work on enterprise wireless networks, effectively cutting out any use in those spaces.
- galaktor 10y ago
  For this reason I've been thinking about flashing mine with eureka-rom [1] Anybody try this out yet? [1] http://forum.xda-developers.com/android-tv/chromecast/rom-flashcast-autoroot-t3270332 http://forum.xda-developers.com/android-tv/chromecast/rom-fl...
breakingcups 10y ago
Yet for some reason the ability to cast HTML5 video's from my Nexus 5 has silently disappeared for months without a fix?

240 points by jdimov10 10y ago

biot 10y ago

"people have casted more than 38 million times from Chrome, watching and listening to more than 50 million hours of content." So Google is monitoring your watching habits. What other information do they collect as part of this? Are these details documented in a privacy policy somewhere? The setting chrome://flags/#disable-cast-streaming-hw-encoding only appears to toggle hardware encoding or not. Can it be disabled altogether?

chipperyman573 10y ago
Generic usage time is probably the least surprising thing google is tracking.
andrewguenther 10y ago
There is a "Automatically send usage statistics and crash reports to Google" checkbox right in the settings. It even asks you during the install. Just uncheck the box to disable. They also recorded this data as part of the Chrome extension, not natively. If you want to see more about the native metrics Chrome sends to Google, check out "chrome://histograms/"

niftich 10y ago

There was formerly a Google-made addon for this. Now it's integrated into Chrome. There are two features here: - Chrome can stream its renderer output to a 'Google Cast'-supporting stream sink, like a Chromecast. This option is buried in the hamburger menu. - websites can be coded against a JS library that's implemented by Chrome [1][2]. Then the 'stream to...' menu is shown as the 'cast' icon near the address bar. [1] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/reference/chrome/ https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/reference/chrome/ [2] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender

RevBooyah 10y ago

All in an effort to reduce its memory footprint...

gkoberger 10y ago
It's not all about memory footprint; it's sometimes about just working for the grandmother who buys a $35 Chromecast from Best Buy.
- KeyBoardG 10y ago
  Couldn't they just have the extension pre-installed with the ability to remove?
  - Frank2312 10y ago
    Then you get people hating "bloatware" and complaining.
- jawns 10y ago
  And sometimes it's not all about that either, but about vendor lock-in.
  - gkoberger 10y ago
    Sometimes "making it just work" and "avoiding vendor lock-in" are incompatible. Plus, it's literally called "Chromecast."
    - kevincox 10y ago
      The device itself runs chrome. So I don't think of the sender as the influence in the name. Plus chrome has a good mind-share which helps marketing.
  - knz 10y ago
    Is it vendor lock in if you're casting services like Netflix etc? You can use many different devices to watch your content. We've had a Chromecast since the first version and it has always worked well (with the exception of Netflix lately). I recently purchased a Sony Blue Ray player and was surprised to find Chromecast built in to that.

joemccall86 10y ago

Assuming they drop support for the Chromecast add-on, doesn't this effectively eliminate the ability for other browsers that can use chrome extensions to cast to a Chromecast? (e.g., Opera, Vivaldi, maybe Chromium)?

pavanky 10y ago
That is only going to be a problem if they do not upstream the changes to Chromium.
- andybak 10y ago
  That's actually a very important question. Is Google opening up casting in the widest sense to 3rd party clients? I know there was some push in this direction when it was launched ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_and_Launch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_and_Launch ) but I seem to recall hearing that there is now more to Google Cast than DIAL. Does anyone know how interoperable this all is?
  - vbernat 10y ago
    DIAL/SSDP is not used anymore (except for legacy apps, like the Youtube one). Now, this is mDNS (good) and proprietary protobuf protocol. There is no documentation for this but several people have reversed-engineered the stuff from the source code of Chromium and the extension to get third-party client (third-party Chromecast is not possible since there is a signature mechanism for clients to check). I have done such an implementation here: https://github.com/vincentbernat/nodecastor https://github.com/vincentbernat/nodecastor (but not really maintained).
    - andybak 10y ago
      That's troubling. Has anyone got any sense about whether interoperability is merely neglected or whether there's strategic reasons for its abandonment (either from Google itself or via pressure from partners with 'premium content')
    - 10y ago

obilgic 10y ago

So now its called Google Cast, not Chromecast?

lowmess 10y ago
Google Cast is the technology, Chromecast is the device. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Frank2312 10y ago
  At first, it was all Chromecast. The API was even called the Chromecast API. They changed it to Google Cast last March [0]. [0] http://www.techtimes.com/articles/143386/20160323/google-rebrands-chromecast-as-google-cast-heres-the-reason-for-the-name-change.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/143386/20160323/google-reb...
  - criley2 10y ago
    The person said the device was still called Chromecast. https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chromecast/ https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chromecast/ https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chromecast/tv/#?discover https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chromecast/tv/#?discover Google is still branding the device as Chromecast and still heavily using the term in the marketing for the actual device. Also, other companies make Google Cast supported hardware, such as the NVidia Shield. https://shield.nvidia.com/blog/what-is-googlecast-chromecast https://shield.nvidia.com/blog/what-is-googlecast-chromecast
    - Frank2312 10y ago
      I understood that. I was just clarifying for obilgic by explaining that he wasn't mistaken until more recently when Google rebranded the API.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mrrsm 10y ago

gscott 10y ago

Looking at WireShark last night Google Cast was reaching out to Google every 30 seconds. I narrowed it down to my web browser, removing it from the toolbar stopped it.

andybak 10y ago
Assuming some of the logic for determining whether a page is castable (or what options to offer) reside server-side then I can imaginez why this might be necessary. However it also might be poor coding. Was it onerous in terms of resources - or was there any hint of nefarious behaviour? My suspicion is many people will assume the latter despite the rather neutral tone of your post. Therefore I'd be interested to hear more detail.
- gscott 10y ago
  I have been interested in the Hacking Team leak of spyware and hacking tools. I found in the documentation taken from the hacking team website that when you run Wireshark their spyware looks for that and won't install. I have heard of wireshark before but never tried it, once I had it I saw that google chromecast going on it is like a beacon telling Google my ip address over and over again. Seemed like a bad thing. Maybe not all totally logical, why bother, but being logical all of the time is boring!

sfifs 10y ago

So will it work on Chrome for Android? It's not been available there yet.

Frank2312 10y ago
It has been available for quite a while, but only for videos (they added a button in the video player). If you want to cast a tab, while it's not the optimal solution, you can cast your whole screen using the quick settings tile.

microcolonel 10y ago

If this means it's in the Chromium source tree, I'm very happy. Then there is an open source Google Cast client maintained by Google proper. And it looks like that's exactly what they've done. https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/media/cast/?q=cast&sq=package:chromium https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/media/cast/?q=cast&sq=p... No more needing to guess how to implement non-deprecated versions of the API when integrating with other players.

vbernat 10y ago
This part is here since quite some time (since the introduction of the "new" protocol, two years ago). It is not the complete picture since it's only the low-level view (mDNS and protobuf). It's not sufficient to build a client since you still have to figure out the content of the messages. The gap is the extension that was provided until now (as a minified JS).
- microcolonel 10y ago
  Ahh; that explains why performance wasn't awful all this time.

chrissnell 10y ago

It seems like Cast would be an inferior way to stream HD content to a TV for many users. If the source host is wifi-connected, you're tripling the amount of traffic that's passed through your access points: once from the content source (e.g. Netflix) to the laptop via the AP, then presumably from the laptop to the AP and back out to the Chromecast device.

Gurrewe 10y ago
This is not the case for apps such as Netflix, YouTube, and HBO. They all stream directly to the Chromecast from your internet connection, your browser or app on your phone just acts as a remote.
IanCal 10y ago
That's not how it's done. That's a complete fallback. For Netflix what happens is your browser tells the cast device what URL to go to to play the content. Your browser does not need to steam the video to the cast device. It can fall back to that so you can cast anything, however.
- ihsw 10y ago
  This is true but there are a couple caveats, one being the device playing the content has to already be authenticated properly. You cannot simply go near a Cast-enabled device and start playing your stuff, unless I am mistaken. If that is the functionality then that would be terrifying as I would be handing my credentials to this Cast-enabled device.
  - Frank2312 10y ago
    Not sure if it works with desktops/laptops, but there is a guest mode (disabled by default) in the settings (on the Android app) that allows anyone to add thing sto the player queue. Only app I know for sure it works is Youtube. I'm not sure what other app handles it, maybe GPM and Spotify.
  - sarnowski 10y ago

agumonkey 10y ago

I don't know if it's related but chromecast was a bit buggy. Reboot level buggy.

mSparks 10y ago
videostream mobile and chromecast for the win.
ihsw 10y ago
I have a Roku and casting YouTube and Netflix works great. One caveat is Netflix doesn't autoplay to the next episode after casting a video. I really wish it had Google Play Music though.
- andrewpi 10y ago
  Google Play Music support was one of the main reasons I added a Chromecast to my setup. It's a frustrating gap in the wide variety of content that Roku can handle.

Vexs 10y ago

Can't say I'm surprised. It's built into android now too, and the cast extension has been showing a lot of change recently.

rektide 10y ago

Looking forward to some standardization/interop coming out of this. There's Presentation API[1], which spec's a web API, but that still leaves open the question of coordination between a controller (browser) and display. Chrome's working on it[2], and I'd guess would target Cast, so web pages might be able to request their own casting, but it doesn't seem like anything other browsers could compete/cooperate openly with atm. [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/presentation-api/ https://www.w3.org/TR/presentation-api/ [2] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=component:Blink%3EPresentationAPI https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=component...

spike021 10y ago

Not sure how related this is, but my parents have a one or two year old Samsung "Smart" HDTV. It doesn't have Chromecast built in, but it does have Youtube, Netflix, and a few other "apps". I thought it was really cool one time when I was visiting during a SpaceX launch and experimental sea landing because I was able to swap from watching live via Youtube on my laptop to casting it to their HDTV. That was just by pressing the cast button and selecting their TV, which was automatically in the list without me doing anything. It's awesome that Google's made this more convenient and I think it'll be something useful for a lot of people.

honkhonkpants 10y ago
Those are YouTube-specific hacks, as I understand it. My Oppo Blu-Ray player also shows up as a cast-to destination in the YouTube application, but it doesn't show up anywhere else that has the casting ability.
- kevincox 10y ago
  I believe that this is the DIAL (http://www.dial-multiscreen.org/ http://www.dial-multiscreen.org/) protocol. I know Netflix and YouTube use it, as well as I presume others. Personally I don't think it is as cool as Google Cast as it requires an app/server installed on the target, where as Cast can open any website.
- spike021 10y ago
  Oh, in that case I had no idea what I was talking about. Still a pretty useful 'feature' in any case. Carry on...

denzil_correa 10y ago

I am unable to mirror Chromecast from my Mac. Basically, it mirrors the video but does not mirror the audio.

chatmasta 10y ago
Assuming you're talking about casting from a chrome tab, I thought i had this issue, but it's a simple fix. After you start casting, click the cast button again. You should see a volume slider that you can adjust.
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  It is not a question of volume. It just does not play on the TV. Here's the error I get. http://imgur.com/a/Hpzmb http://imgur.com/a/Hpzmb
  - chatmasta 10y ago
    Weird. I'd take a look at your Mac audio settings (System Prefs -> Sound -> Output) and any weird applications you've installed with access to sound output. Also try quitting all apps except chrome and see if the problem persists.
    - denzil_correa 10y ago
      I have no apps that have access to the sound output. The problem persists even if I run ONLY Chrome. I am not the only one - you can see such an issue on the Chromecast support forums for many users. I have tried all recommended solutions like media router enable/disable etc. including using the Canary version. No luck! I have also raised this with the Chromecast support team like 2 weeks ago. I haven't heard from them since then.
  - unfocused 10y ago
    I think as of this July post, you can't send audio when mirroring your Desktop from a Mac: https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chromecast/jGSayxcIng4/30jGuullCwAJ https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chromecast/jGSayxcIng... "Grace Y. said: Hello, Thanks for your patience. Currently, audio is not supported when casting your desktop from a Mac computer/laptop. However, casting a tab does support audio. We're always looking for ways to improve, so your feature request has been duly noted. Best, Grace"

balls187 10y ago

Thank you for the extra and unnecessary bloat on the main browser I use for work.

azinman2 10y ago
Safari has gotten quite good, btw, if you're on a mac. I mentioned this to a guy on the original Chrome team, and he said he wouldn't be surprised if it were faster now.... Chrome used to be all about speed but now it's about features.
- dandandans 10y ago
  Safari dev tools kills adoption for me, specifically the styles inspector and the lack of an individual input/focus state for the property and value.
rocky1138 10y ago
Does Chromium include this "feature" ? Would be nice to have a barebones Chrome.

chatmasta 10y ago

For anyone who hasn't seen it, check out the "peerflix" project on github. It's an amazing way to stream torrents, and you can easily cast them from chrome. Basically you just do: peerflix 'magnetUrl' And then navigate to http://localhost:8888 http://localhost:8888 and cast the tab. Unfortunately it only works with MP4. There may be some workarounds with an ffmpeg command in the middle, but I haven't experimented with it much.

paavokoya 10y ago
Although I've been waiting for wireless screen-sharing between TV and PC for a long time, that sounds much more difficult than a simple HDMI cable to my laptop. It's actually one of the reasons I continue to buy laptops.
- zackbloom 10y ago
  Just to point out, the 'difficult' step here is really the torrent download. If you already have the file locally, you can send it to your tv in a couple clicks using Videostream. Assuming everything works as you hope, it's more convenient than plugging in a cable for me at least.
  - paavokoya 10y ago
    The thing about chromecast is the need of a local wi-fi connection. Which I don't have. It's a shame bluetooth isn't more capable in this department.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      I think what may drive that will hopefully be better auto UX interfaces for devices...
bduerst 10y ago
Put.io will do this too and even convert to mp4 for you, but it costs $9/mo.

Angostura 10y ago

Anyone know if this includes the iOS version?

Frank2312 10y ago
You can't cast a browser window, but you can cast videos : http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/google-adds-chromecast-support-for-ios-chrome-app/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/google-adds-chrome...

tiles 10y ago

Since Google Cast has been open-sourced (upstreamed to Chromium), does this make it the de-facto alternative to Miracast? My Roku supports screen mirroring, but the fact that apps and companies are more keen on supporting ChromeCast has been frustrating.

a_thro_away 10y ago

It appears that Google will eliminate Chrome "packaged apps" in the next year; do I understand these to be locally installed apps? (I don't know Chrome). All apps after that must be on (a service?) the web. What could be the reason behind this?

SquareWheel 10y ago
Chrome is deprecating Chrome Web Apps in favor of native Web Apps. Essentially it's a push towards a more open web now that the APIs have caught up. It really has nothing to do with services.

eof 10y ago

Since this has happened my (gen 1) chromecast experience has gone almost totally to crap. The built in functionality is supposed to be smart about down scaling for wifi speed, and thus has removed all options to do it manually; unfortunately it utterly fails (I believe because wifi speed is fine but the bitrate is too high for the hardware). Lots of people don't like this update. https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chromecast/5IG1ClAapLc/3pCqFStfEAAJ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chromecast/5IG1... Streaming from my android is also much worse, with high bitrate streams that I used to consume regularly no longer working at all (e.g <1 fps). I have been extremely happy with my chromecast until the last few months, and it honestly has become something I really dislike now.

flavor8 10y ago

Any chance for "reverse cast"? I would love to be able to cast from supported apps in my phone to a tab in my browser.

piquadrat 10y ago
Vysor is pretty much that. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vysor/gidgenkbbabolejbgbpnhbimgjbffefm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vysor/gidgenkbbabo...

rblatz 10y ago

I'm hoping that the Sonos event tomorrow includes an announcement about supporting the audio portion Google Cast.

echelon 10y ago
How open is Sonos' API? I've been thinking about investing in some of their audio hardware.
- jrockway 10y ago
  There is a PulseAudio extension that writes to both Sonos speakers and Chromecast: https://github.com/masmu/pulseaudio-dlna https://github.com/masmu/pulseaudio-dlna DLNA is some sort of standard, maybe that's what Sonos uses. I personally just use their phone app though.
  - rblatz 10y ago
    That is an awesome find, thanks!
- rblatz 10y ago
  Not very, but I they've been opening up more. Just today they announced they were adding spotify connect support, and amazon echo voice control support.

leeoniya 10y ago

remembering my wtf from debugging phantom console errors: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24490323/google-chrome-cast-sender-error-if-chrome-cast-extension-is-not-installed-or-usi http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24490323/google-chrome-ca...

jeffdubin 10y ago

Nice job, thank you! Now... how can I disable it? Next time I'm on a public wifi network, this is going to be sending out probes for Chromecast devices, and it's only a matter of time before someone finds an exploit.

discreditable 10y ago
> only a matter of time before someone finds an exploit. Chrome is looking ripe for exploitation. IIRC the default install includes an mDNS responder. Check out the guy who has every Chrome instance on his network crash at the same time: https://redd.it/4xej0p https://redd.it/4xej0p

mashlol 10y ago

I really want a feature that would allow me to cast from my phone to my desktop. I have a big TV plugged into my desktop but I can't cast to it from my phone, I have to remote in and manually control the desktop, it's painful.

mappu 10y ago
Windows 10 added a built-in Miracast receiver, that works well with Android 6.

kelnos 10y ago

I'm still really disappointed that the Cast protocol is effectively closed, and Google only supports casting from Chrome, Android, and iOS. I think Google is really shooting themselves in the foot regarding adoption. I'd love to have a command-line Cast client for Linux, integration into pulseaudio, a Firefox Cast extension, a native UI (non-browser) video player, etc. Sure, some people have reverse-engineered the newer protocol, but I've never gotten any of the unofficial clients to work reliably (and some just flat-out don't work at all).

colemickens 10y ago
There are alternative clients, it's the receiver side that is locked down. For example: https://github.com/xat/castnow https://github.com/xat/castnow
- kelnos 10y ago
  Never got it to work with anything, video, audio, images. The ChromeCast screen changes as if it's loading something, but it just sits there forever and nothing plays.
  - lokapian 10y ago
    firewall maybe?
niftich 10y ago
Google's not shooting themselves in the foot because: - Google Cast is not a general-purpose streaming protocol, even though it is designed to mimic that UX to a casual user - Cast provides some features like 'ad breaks' [1] that are valuable to content providers and aggregators which you wouldn't find in a general-purpose streaming protocol, making it more likely that those who want these features will make their streaming app Cast-compatible - The Cast SDK comes with a TOS [2] that's a rather enlightening read - You have to register your application with Google if you're developing a Cast sender [3], or if you're developing a Cast receiver and don't want to use their Default Receiver [4] (presumably, because you're building your own). Google's building an ecosystem here. This isn't Miracast or WiDi or even AirPlay, although kudos to them for making everyone think so. [1] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/ads https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/ads [2] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/terms https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/terms [3] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender#setup https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender#setup [4] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/receiver_apps#choose-a-receiver https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/receiver_apps#choose...

realityking 10y ago

I love Chromecasts and brining Google Cast into Chrome made me quite happy since the integration with Hangouts (you can cast a tab into a hangout if the meeting is part of your Google Calendar) is terrific. However as someone who helps out with the company's network, they are infuriating: - They ignore the DHCP given DNS Servers instead using Google's. I'm sure the same is true for NTP though I haven't bothered testing that. - They use mDNS and DNS-SD but not DNS-SD Wide Area Discovery. This makes subnetting more difficult and increases broadcast traffic quite a bit. - Not a complaint, more a wish, but a PoE version of the Ethernet adapter would be immensely helpful.

hackuser 10y ago
OT: If someone wanted to block connections to Google's DNS servers, can it be done reliably? Is there a known, static range? AFAIK Android also uses Google's DNS servers, and it's hard coded into the OS, and the client pings the server before any software firewall can load at boot. (Allow me to reemphasize: AFAIK; if someone knows more I'd appreciate it.)
- viraptor 10y ago
  I don't know how the mobile networks configure the dns, but on WiFi android uses whatever dns server is advertised via dhcp.
  - izacus 10y ago
    Android yes, Chromecast no. It's hardcoded to defeat DNS-level location spoofing for Netflix and similar services.
- tracker1 10y ago
  You can capture all DNS outbound (port 53) traffic not to/from your local DNS server and redirect it to your local/internal DNS server if you really wanted to. This is often done in order to jail/freeze all traffic until authenticated as well as whitelist certain traffic for the purpose of authentication.

Nullabillity 10y ago

> and partnered with other manufacturers to make Cast-enabled TVs and speakers. WTF? Just publish the damn API already.

skrowl 10y ago

I wish I could easily cast from Firefox or another privacy-respecting browser

MichaelGG 10y ago
There should be a campaign to call Chrome "Google Browser" to make it clear just how tight the connection is. A lot of more-tech people would have a slightly harder time saying they use GBrowse than Chrome.

israrkhan 10y ago

Few months ago, I bought a Nexus 5x assuming that it will support Miracast (like Nexus 5 did). I was very disappointed to know that Google dropped support for Miracast. re-enabling Miracast support was just a matter of changing a line in a config file. However that required rooting the device. Dropping support for standard protocols and forcing users to use their proprietary stuff? what happened to their corporate moto "Don't be evil".

rektide 10y ago
Really appreciate that Intel's been working on a Miracast receiver for Linux. Been super sad that Linux has been so far behind on the Miracast & Wifi-p2p fronts. https://01.org/wds https://01.org/wds
voltagex_ 10y ago
Damnit Google! The 5x also doesn't have SlimPort or MHL support (when I found an adapter that worked well for the 4 and 5, HDMI out was fantastic) It may be that they found that Miracast just doesn't work well enough. I've got all sorts of Wifi gear and I can't get my Moto X Style to stream via Miracast reliably (to an Xbox One as a client). The Nexus 5 streams reliably but drops / stutters about once every two minutes, making music streams pretty much unusable. Back to a Raspberry Pi, I think.

johnnyo 10y ago

I hope Amazon FireTV supports this soon, or supplies a client. I've already got several of these sticks, and I'd love to be able to cast a tab up from somewhere on my network.

vertis 10y ago

Recently I moved house. I had to wait 6 weeks for the internet to be connected (first world problem). While I was waiting for the connection I inevitably tried to fall back on local content and discovered, much to my discontent, that my Chromecast wouldn't work at all without internet, even when I was trying to play local content. I've been less happy with it ever since.

surlyadopter 10y ago

" In the past month alone, people have casted more than 38 million times from Chrome, watching and listening to more than 50 million hours of content." Apologies for the stupid question, but how exactly does Google know this? Is there some "send statistics home" function in the browser?

corobo 10y ago
Yes it's one of the first things it asks you when you install it https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/96817?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/96817?hl=en-GB

greggman 10y ago

Chromecast if left on (using the included power adapter) will use about 14gig of bandwidth downloading images for its background that you can not turn off. As someone on a metered MiFi that's a no go.

bigiain 10y ago
Seriously? That really says something about the people who developed and tested these... (Something along the lines of "Hey, maybe you should try getting out of the Google campus/dorms occasionally, possibly even out of the Bay Area, and see how the world works for non-Google employees…") Chromecast - only $35![1] smallprint [1] requires unlimited highspeed broadband. May use several times it's purchase price in bandwidth per month if your employer doesn't provide free Google Fibre to your home.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  I've posted at least once before about this. Google, Microsoft and a lot of other companies really don't think about "low" bandwidth (<20 megabit downstream) or situations where you're not always connected. Props to Facebook for having "2G" day. I hope it still happens. * Dropbox is meant to have a LAN sync but fails back quickly to syncing from their servers. There's no way to debug why it isn't using other hosts on your LAN * OneDrive has no LAN sync at all * There's no way to debug Windows 10's LAN update sharing if it fails. * Windows 10 will default to uploading partial updates to other users on the Internet (bittorrent style) * Windows 10 will let you set a Wifi connection as "metered" and actually behave quite well (deferring updates, driver downloads and OneDrive data), but there's no way to set Ethernet networks as metered, outside of a registry hack. * Google not supporting SD cards in the Nexus line (yes, I know about the performance issues, I own several >$50 SD cards that are trash). Mobile data is expensive. * It took Google until 2016 to offer offline caching of YouTube videos, and even then you have to pay them for the privilege * Microsoft's newer .NET and Powershell stuff download >50 megabytes of dependencies from NuGet.org and MyGet.org. Offline caching is possible, but maybe not on Linux
  - bigiain 10y ago

dingo_bat 10y ago

The time is coming for me to switch back to Firefox.

dvcrn 10y ago

I was surprised to hear that not many people knew that Safari does something similar (kind of) with AirPlay. A lot of videos and content (on YouTube for example) can be Airplayed when using Safari, but not when using Chrome or Firefox.

ForFreedom 10y ago

Can I cast a video playing on vlc or is it only from the browser?

urmish 10y ago
There is a command on unix for this https://alan-mushi.github.io/asap/2015/03/21/vlc-stream-to-chromecast.html https://alan-mushi.github.io/asap/2015/03/21/vlc-stream-to-c... vlc -vvv ./file.mp4 --sout "#chromecast{ip=192.168.1.4}" You can find out the ip of your chromecast with the command "arp -a" and it should list Chromecast as one of the devices if its switched on and on the same wifi Only works with VLC nightly builds 3.x.x. Also it is not very stable but gets the job done if you don't care about subtitles and scrolling through the video frequently. THe best option is plex (works for many file formats). Second best option is videostream extension on Chrome (not on chromium). But videostream doesn't support all file formats. They keep updating though.
- ForFreedom 10y ago
  hmm.. Could I mirror my macbook screen?

askvictor 10y ago

And yet, despite Google making a strong play for the education and corporate markets, Chromecast still doesn't work on enterprise wireless networks, effectively cutting out any use in those spaces.

galaktor 10y ago
For this reason I've been thinking about flashing mine with eureka-rom [1] Anybody try this out yet? [1] http://forum.xda-developers.com/android-tv/chromecast/rom-flashcast-autoroot-t3270332 http://forum.xda-developers.com/android-tv/chromecast/rom-fl...

breakingcups 10y ago

Yet for some reason the ability to cast HTML5 video's from my Nexus 5 has silently disappeared for months without a fix?