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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 s

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
    Heh - it's quite a struggle for me to get 20megabits at my place. I've got reasonably affordable 12-14mbits of ADSL2 (with unimited traffic) for $70/month, but I can't get NBN where I live, there's no Telstra or Optus cable (our local shared 100mbit down HFC option which tops out a maybe 3mbits up) in my building complex, so the only "high speed" options are LTE (a several dollars per Gigabyte) or _maybe_ NBN fixed wireless (tops out at 50mbit). Lucky Australia is such a beautiful country, eh?
    - voltagex_ 10y ago
      I feel guilty every time I mention that I'm on the NBN - the real one. The fibre terminates into a NBNco branded box and as long as I've got a device that speaks PPPoE I'm online. It doesn't solve all problems - there's massive congestion on Internode where I am that limits me to 20 megabits during the day, and TPG have messed up the routes to everywhere (Xbox Live gets <2 megabit, but Steam works fine).
      - bigiain 10y ago
        So I just checked again - the brand new 200 apartment building up the end of my street is wired for NBN, pretty much all of the rest of my suburb isn't even in the planning stage still. (I bet I could get a bunch of wifi signals from that new apartment block with my 24db gain 2.4GHz yagi...)
        voltagex_ 10y ago
        Make a friend on a higher level apartment and set up a Ubiquiti point-to-point network.
        bigiain 10y ago
        Or https://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=cracking_wpa https://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=cracking_wpa (Who me? _Never!_)
  - 10y ago
sergers 10y ago
workaround is to use the USB port on tv if it has it so chromecast only powers/off when the tv is on/off. if that is not feasible, disable all the background options. create an album of a single image on your google account. enable showing photos from your google account, selecting that album..
ricktdotorg 10y ago
there is an easy solution for this. 1) create a google photos album with a single photo in it 2) in the "Google Cast" mobile app, go to Settings --> Backdrop, and uncheck/turn OFF everything except Google Photos 3) select your "single photo" album 4) profit

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
  Heh - it's quite a struggle for me to get 20megabits at my place. I've got reasonably affordable 12-14mbits of ADSL2 (with unimited traffic) for $70/month, but I can't get NBN where I live, there's no Telstra or Optus cable (our local shared 100mbit down HFC option which tops out a maybe 3mbits up) in my building complex, so the only "high speed" options are LTE (a several dollars per Gigabyte) or _maybe_ NBN fixed wireless (tops out at 50mbit). Lucky Australia is such a beautiful country, eh?
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    I feel guilty every time I mention that I'm on the NBN - the real one. The fibre terminates into a NBNco branded box and as long as I've got a device that speaks PPPoE I'm online. It doesn't solve all problems - there's massive congestion on Internode where I am that limits me to 20 megabits during the day, and TPG have messed up the routes to everywhere (Xbox Live gets <2 megabit, but Steam works fine).
    - bigiain 10y ago
      So I just checked again - the brand new 200 apartment building up the end of my street is wired for NBN, pretty much all of the rest of my suburb isn't even in the planning stage still. (I bet I could get a bunch of wifi signals from that new apartment block with my 24db gain 2.4GHz yagi...)
      - voltagex_ 10y ago
        Make a friend on a higher level apartment and set up a Ubiquiti point-to-point network.
        bigiain 10y ago
        Or https://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=cracking_wpa https://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=cracking_wpa (Who me? _Never!_)
- 10y ago

sergers 10y ago

workaround is to use the USB port on tv if it has it so chromecast only powers/off when the tv is on/off. if that is not feasible, disable all the background options. create an album of a single image on your google account. enable showing photos from your google account, selecting that album..

ricktdotorg 10y ago

there is an easy solution for this. 1) create a google photos album with a single photo in it 2) in the "Google Cast" mobile app, go to Settings --> Backdrop, and uncheck/turn OFF everything except Google Photos 3) select your "single photo" album 4) profit