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The developer of AllCast, Koushik Dutta, gave his side in this reddit comment: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1l2hez/google_blocks_chromecast_app_that

by bru 13y ago

The developer of AllCast, Koushik Dutta, gave his side in this reddit comment: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1l2hez/google_blocks_chromecast_app_that_let_you_stream/cbv8u0s http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1l2hez/google_block...

barista 13y ago
Copied here: Koush here. I've been suspicious of the Chromecast developer policies since release. From my personal interactions with their developer relations, they've been quite tight lipped about who would be receiving approval for a release to a broader audience: "Unfortunately, at the moment our standard answer is: Thank you so much for reaching out about developing for Chromecast. It’s still early days, so we are just previewing the Google Cast SDK and hope to be sharing it in its entirety with developers soon. We look forward to seeing to releasing the public SDK later on so that mobile and web developers can start to create compelling, multi-screen experiences. We're not currently working with additional partners until we release a public SDK. We are trying to find a better answer, but we have nothing yet to announce." Google TV (yes, Chromecast is from the GoogleTV team) has a storied history of releasing closed off products, only allowing access to select partners and media companies. I was fairly certain that Chromecast would be no different. My suspicions were confirmed today. Here's what's happened since release, for context: Chromecast ships with whitelisting. Why go through the trouble of having a whitelist to do development? It took extra development effort to lock the platform down, and build out the whitelisting infrastructure. A walled garden was planned since inception. They intend to use that wall. Chromecast shipped with no default media player app, or any way to play your own content. As I demonstrated, this is actually very easy to implement. The fact that it did not ship with this by default was likely calculated. They don't want you playing your own content. Chromecast had a "GoogleCastSample" app that could be leveraged as a default media player. Many developers started using this. One week after release, GoogleCastSample was disabled. Chromecast's tab casting also supported local content. I, and a few other developers, managed to reverse engineer the Chromecast tab protocol to piggy back this to deliver local content. This was not simply "broken" with an update. It was intentionally disabled. See code explanation here, if you want: https://plus.google.com/110558071969009568835/posts/HbrpBbVGWvS https://plus.google.com/110558071969009568835/posts/HbrpBbVG... What this all points to: The Chromecast is just a Google TV in a smaller form factor. Yet another box from your TV that delivers the same old tired array of big media apps that you can find on any other cable/tv box. I already have 5 of such boxes (2 Xbox, 2 Apple TV, 1 Roku). I don't need another box to do this. I want a mainstream, open platform, that I can connect to my TV. That would be new. That would be different. The motivations behind this behavior are obvious. Google needs to do this to placate media companies, who will perpetually push stringent requirements before granting access to their coveted content. This will not change until content delivery companies (Netflix, Amazon, and Google) start creating their own content. And in fact, this is starting to happen already.
zmmmmm 13y ago
His response is a little bit trite when you read his previous post where he more or less taunts Google about how he reverse engineered the protocol to avoid the whitelist. In some way it almost feels like a setup - perhaps this is all a strategy by Koush to flush Google out on this issue, and I suspect they've been forced to confront it now before they were really ready.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- koushikdutta 13y ago
  ;)

by bru 13y ago

barista 13y ago

Copied here: Koush here. I've been suspicious of the Chromecast developer policies since release. From my personal interactions with their developer relations, they've been quite tight lipped about who would be receiving approval for a release to a broader audience: "Unfortunately, at the moment our standard answer is: Thank you so much for reaching out about developing for Chromecast. It’s still early days, so we are just previewing the Google Cast SDK and hope to be sharing it in its entirety with developers soon. We look forward to seeing to releasing the public SDK later on so that mobile and web developers can start to create compelling, multi-screen experiences. We're not currently working with additional partners until we release a public SDK. We are trying to find a better answer, but we have nothing yet to announce." Google TV (yes, Chromecast is from the GoogleTV team) has a storied history of releasing closed off products, only allowing access to select partners and media companies. I was fairly certain that Chromecast would be no different. My suspicions were confirmed today. Here's what's happened since release, for context: Chromecast ships with whitelisting. Why go through the trouble of having a whitelist to do development? It took extra development effort to lock the platform down, and build out the whitelisting infrastructure. A walled garden was planned since inception. They intend to use that wall. Chromecast shipped with no default media player app, or any way to play your own content. As I demonstrated, this is actually very easy to implement. The fact that it did not ship with this by default was likely calculated. They don't want you playing your own content. Chromecast had a "GoogleCastSample" app that could be leveraged as a default media player. Many developers started using this. One week after release, GoogleCastSample was disabled. Chromecast's tab casting also supported local content. I, and a few other developers, managed to reverse engineer the Chromecast tab protocol to piggy back this to deliver local content. This was not simply "broken" with an update. It was intentionally disabled. See code explanation here, if you want: https://plus.google.com/110558071969009568835/posts/HbrpBbVGWvS https://plus.google.com/110558071969009568835/posts/HbrpBbVG... What this all points to: The Chromecast is just a Google TV in a smaller form factor. Yet another box from your TV that delivers the same old tired array of big media apps that you can find on any other cable/tv box. I already have 5 of such boxes (2 Xbox, 2 Apple TV, 1 Roku). I don't need another box to do this. I want a mainstream, open platform, that I can connect to my TV. That would be new. That would be different. The motivations behind this behavior are obvious. Google needs to do this to placate media companies, who will perpetually push stringent requirements before granting access to their coveted content. This will not change until content delivery companies (Netflix, Amazon, and Google) start creating their own content. And in fact, this is starting to happen already.

zmmmmm 13y ago

His response is a little bit trite when you read his previous post where he more or less taunts Google about how he reverse engineered the protocol to avoid the whitelist. In some way it almost feels like a setup - perhaps this is all a strategy by Koush to flush Google out on this issue, and I suspect they've been forced to confront it now before they were really ready.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
koushikdutta 13y ago
;)