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Anyone having a Chromecast and able to tell me what I'm missing? Currently I've got xbmc running on a Raspberry Pi. Connected via HDMI, online via wifi and I ca

Anyone having a Chromecast and able to tell me what I'm missing? Currently I've got xbmc running on a Raspberry Pi. Connected via HDMI, online via wifi and I can stream more or less everything (videos, images, music) from my phone to that thing - not sure if there's a decent way to do that from my laptop running Linux. What are Chromecasts used for? Should I buy one?

micro_cam 12y ago
For me the main selling point is the low price and not sure it makes sense if you have something setup to do most of it. I do use mine a ton for netflix, hulu (via tab casting) and arbitray media files via the videostream chrome extension/app from the webstore. It has a simple unintrusive ui which is nice.
- darklajid 12y ago
  Hey - thanks for answering. The price is about the same (and I have the Pi). So that's mostly an argument for 'why not' and 'you might waste $35, but nothing more'. Netflix/Hulu - no user myself and I'm not sure if those services are available outside of the US/available in DE. Tab casting, as far as I understand that, is a Chrome feature. I'm a Firefox guy. Would I be able to do something useful with that device? Right now it seems like it would be equivalent to the Pi w/ xbmc, in an arguably smaller/nicer package. I'm hoping for a killer feature that I haven't considered/noticed :)
  - kudu 12y ago
    Firefox did add tab casting for the Chromecast to its Android version (https://plus.google.com/+LucasRocha/posts/AJtJ3faZXtJ https://plus.google.com/+LucasRocha/posts/AJtJ3faZXtJ). I'm basically in the same situation as you. I already have Raspbmc set up on my Raspberry Pi, and see little reason to purchase a Chromecast. In my understanding, the "killer feature" is that it's supported by an increasingly large number of Android apps, which don't have support for casting to arbitrary UPnP targets as far as I'm aware.
    - baq 12y ago
      BubbleUPNP https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft... happily casts media from dlna to my chromecast, might want to check it out.
  - Vespasian 12y ago
    Chromecast, Pi + xbmc user from DE here. Currently my main applications used by my chromecast are watchever (a service like netflix), twitch (using a third party app shame on me ;)) and youtube while I use the Pi mainly for "offline" media. The most appealing feature of the chromecast is that it "just works" and I never had major problem with it (super easy setup, great integration into existing apps, turns on the tv once it is activated on my phone and so on). For me it delivers on the promises, which manufacturers of "smart TVs" made but failed to achieve in their products.
- ajtaylor 12y ago
  Thank you for the pointer to the videostream app. I've been wondering how to do this for a couple weeks now!
notjustanymike 12y ago
$35 and let's me use my phone as my remote for Netflix, HBO Go, and Hulu. Drop dead simple casting. Also it doesn't stream from the phone; it simply takes in commands so it might save your battery some.
- Touche 12y ago
  Phones are poor remotes.
  - michaelcampbell 12y ago
    The phone is a poor remote like democracy is a bad system of gov't. If your remote has a keyboard on it then more power to you, but none of mine do, and the phone is 1000x easier.
    - teach 12y ago
      There's no need to downvote someone just because you disagree with them. For my money, the best remote I ever used was the original TiVo. There's something a lot more haptic about a physical remote with real buttons. And I have yet to see a Chromecast remote app that's very good. Where's the dedicated "skip back 9 seconds" button? Or "turn close captioning on"? These are things I do all the time while watching shows.
      - notwedtm 12y ago
        BOTH of those are available on the Chromecast Netflix, Youtube, and Plex apps.
    - maccard 12y ago
      My TV remote has a keyboard - it's absolutely garbage.
  - mattkrea 12y ago
    I used to feel the same way. Then, I gave away my Apple TV and bought a Chromecast. Searching for content.. jumping between content sources.. it's all easier on the phone.
allegory 12y ago
I had one for two weeks and found it overly pointless and another chunk of ecosystem tie in so I gave it to a friend. It has been passed on already. I reverted back to using foobar2000 on windows with the upnp plugin and my Sony DLNA capable TV for all local media (and a USB stick for mp3s rsync'ed with my laptop). Works fine. The TV does youtube, netflix, amazon video, iplayer etc already. This is a 3 year old Bravia EX unit worth about £100 now.
hayksaakian 12y ago
One special use is live streaming your screen from your phone or computer to the chrome cast.
Thaxll 12y ago
xbmc is terrible on a Raspberri Pi, it's way too slow.
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  It's greatly improved with XBMC 13.0+, which included a bunch of optimizations to make XBMC on the RPi more bearable. Go through the XBMC Raspberry Pi wiki page to turn off things that waste CPU (like the RSS ticker). It also helps to use rpi-config and select the modest overclocking option (the one that doesn't change any voltages). XBMC is very smooth after doing those things. The only issue I still have is that the wifi dongle I attached to the RPi can only pull 10Mb/s. I hear this is due to lack of power provided by the RPi to its USB ports and that it can be mitigated by using a powered USB hub, but I haven't tried that yet. 10Mb/s is enough to stream SD and some HD, but not all HD. I've tweaked the buffering settings to make this a little more bearable but honestly I usually end up transcoding a lower-bitrate version for the RPi to stream, which is a pain without a UPnP server to do that transparently.
  - kudu 12y ago
    Just wondering, what distro are you using? Did you set up XBMC on Raspbian yourself or are you using something pre-packaged like OpenELEC or Raspbmc?
    - cookiecaper 12y ago
      I set it up on Raspbian, but I used the binary packages provided by [Michael Gorven](http://michael.gorven.za.net/raspberrypi/xbmc http://michael.gorven.za.net/raspberrypi/xbmc) instead of compiling from source as described by the Raspbian wiki.
  - stevewillows 12y ago
    A USB install of Openelec on a Raspberry Pi overclocked to 'Super' (1000..) works well. Not as good as a more powerful system, but as far as the pi goes this is the fastest option.
zmmmmm 12y ago
The real "feature" of the Chromecast isn't technical. It's the ecosystem and particularly the fact it "just works" and is built in and enabled by default on a large number of Android apps. So for example, my friend can come over to my house and fire up his Google Music and his phone automatically sees my Chromecast and he can play to it. Or movies, or photos or ... etc etc. You can get any number of devices that do this, but only the Chromecast is built in and enabled by default on every Android device (not sure what iOS status is ...).
- girvo 12y ago
  iOS has AirPlay which is Apple's implementation of a Chromecast style local streaming service. I use it with an Apple TV myself.
  - magicalist 12y ago
    There's an iOS SDK[1], so in theory developers can add AirPlay and Chromecast support to their app, but not sure how widespread that actually is. [1] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/ios_sender https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/ios_sender
TD-Linux 12y ago
Google wanted an Airplay competitor, and for whatever reason wanted to hobble it with the same restrictions as Airplay - a proprietary protocol to only let certain (closed source) programs stream to it, and prevent those programs from streaming to non-Google targets.
- pinkyand 12y ago
  > and for whatever reason wanted to hobble it with the same restrictions as Airplay They want to work with the big content companies. The end game might be ads on the chromecast served through Google with the stick is access to chromecast and the carrot is ad-optimization by Google and maybe blocking pirated content.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  It's not "whatever reason". Google is in the content selling business now - which means they are going to add as much DRM and restrictions to their operating systems, browsers, and devices as possible, to either try to "protect it" (which I think we all know it never works), or to please their content suppliers. This is not just a constant thing we're seeing either. Expect Google to become ever more restrictive and anti-piracy, as they delve deeper into the content selling business. The days of the "Open Google" are long gone now, and they're never coming back.
ssully 12y ago
Easiest way I have found to watch Netflix. Also it's pretty nice for renting movies. I used to rent from Amazon and play off my ps3, but I have started renting from google play and throwing it on the chromecast. I also like that frequent guests(girlfriend) to my house can use it without having to ask me. It sounds like with your current set up a chromecast might only be slightly more convenient, so you might not be missing much.
jethro_tell 12y ago
I take it to hotel ls when i travel. Its tiny, Combined with my phone as a wifi i stream to the hotel tv with a tablet or laptop. easy small portable.
vidarh 12y ago
For me it's the convenience of being able to throw up various content from every device in the house (either via a dedicated app, or via chrome). It doesn't replace xbmc in any but when you want to e.g. play a youtube video, it's fantastically convenient for the low price.

micro_cam 12y ago

For me the main selling point is the low price and not sure it makes sense if you have something setup to do most of it. I do use mine a ton for netflix, hulu (via tab casting) and arbitray media files via the videostream chrome extension/app from the webstore. It has a simple unintrusive ui which is nice.

darklajid 12y ago
Hey - thanks for answering. The price is about the same (and I have the Pi). So that's mostly an argument for 'why not' and 'you might waste $35, but nothing more'. Netflix/Hulu - no user myself and I'm not sure if those services are available outside of the US/available in DE. Tab casting, as far as I understand that, is a Chrome feature. I'm a Firefox guy. Would I be able to do something useful with that device? Right now it seems like it would be equivalent to the Pi w/ xbmc, in an arguably smaller/nicer package. I'm hoping for a killer feature that I haven't considered/noticed :)
- kudu 12y ago
  Firefox did add tab casting for the Chromecast to its Android version (https://plus.google.com/+LucasRocha/posts/AJtJ3faZXtJ https://plus.google.com/+LucasRocha/posts/AJtJ3faZXtJ). I'm basically in the same situation as you. I already have Raspbmc set up on my Raspberry Pi, and see little reason to purchase a Chromecast. In my understanding, the "killer feature" is that it's supported by an increasingly large number of Android apps, which don't have support for casting to arbitrary UPnP targets as far as I'm aware.
  - baq 12y ago
    BubbleUPNP https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft... happily casts media from dlna to my chromecast, might want to check it out.
- Vespasian 12y ago
  Chromecast, Pi + xbmc user from DE here. Currently my main applications used by my chromecast are watchever (a service like netflix), twitch (using a third party app shame on me ;)) and youtube while I use the Pi mainly for "offline" media. The most appealing feature of the chromecast is that it "just works" and I never had major problem with it (super easy setup, great integration into existing apps, turns on the tv once it is activated on my phone and so on). For me it delivers on the promises, which manufacturers of "smart TVs" made but failed to achieve in their products.
ajtaylor 12y ago
Thank you for the pointer to the videostream app. I've been wondering how to do this for a couple weeks now!

notjustanymike 12y ago

$35 and let's me use my phone as my remote for Netflix, HBO Go, and Hulu. Drop dead simple casting. Also it doesn't stream from the phone; it simply takes in commands so it might save your battery some.

Touche 12y ago
Phones are poor remotes.
- michaelcampbell 12y ago
  The phone is a poor remote like democracy is a bad system of gov't. If your remote has a keyboard on it then more power to you, but none of mine do, and the phone is 1000x easier.
  - teach 12y ago
    There's no need to downvote someone just because you disagree with them. For my money, the best remote I ever used was the original TiVo. There's something a lot more haptic about a physical remote with real buttons. And I have yet to see a Chromecast remote app that's very good. Where's the dedicated "skip back 9 seconds" button? Or "turn close captioning on"? These are things I do all the time while watching shows.
    - notwedtm 12y ago
      BOTH of those are available on the Chromecast Netflix, Youtube, and Plex apps.
  - maccard 12y ago
    My TV remote has a keyboard - it's absolutely garbage.
- mattkrea 12y ago
  I used to feel the same way. Then, I gave away my Apple TV and bought a Chromecast. Searching for content.. jumping between content sources.. it's all easier on the phone.

allegory 12y ago

I had one for two weeks and found it overly pointless and another chunk of ecosystem tie in so I gave it to a friend. It has been passed on already. I reverted back to using foobar2000 on windows with the upnp plugin and my Sony DLNA capable TV for all local media (and a USB stick for mp3s rsync'ed with my laptop). Works fine. The TV does youtube, netflix, amazon video, iplayer etc already. This is a 3 year old Bravia EX unit worth about £100 now.

hayksaakian 12y ago

One special use is live streaming your screen from your phone or computer to the chrome cast.

Thaxll 12y ago

xbmc is terrible on a Raspberri Pi, it's way too slow.

cookiecaper 12y ago
It's greatly improved with XBMC 13.0+, which included a bunch of optimizations to make XBMC on the RPi more bearable. Go through the XBMC Raspberry Pi wiki page to turn off things that waste CPU (like the RSS ticker). It also helps to use rpi-config and select the modest overclocking option (the one that doesn't change any voltages). XBMC is very smooth after doing those things. The only issue I still have is that the wifi dongle I attached to the RPi can only pull 10Mb/s. I hear this is due to lack of power provided by the RPi to its USB ports and that it can be mitigated by using a powered USB hub, but I haven't tried that yet. 10Mb/s is enough to stream SD and some HD, but not all HD. I've tweaked the buffering settings to make this a little more bearable but honestly I usually end up transcoding a lower-bitrate version for the RPi to stream, which is a pain without a UPnP server to do that transparently.
- kudu 12y ago
  Just wondering, what distro are you using? Did you set up XBMC on Raspbian yourself or are you using something pre-packaged like OpenELEC or Raspbmc?
  - cookiecaper 12y ago
    I set it up on Raspbian, but I used the binary packages provided by [Michael Gorven](http://michael.gorven.za.net/raspberrypi/xbmc http://michael.gorven.za.net/raspberrypi/xbmc) instead of compiling from source as described by the Raspbian wiki.
- stevewillows 12y ago
  A USB install of Openelec on a Raspberry Pi overclocked to 'Super' (1000..) works well. Not as good as a more powerful system, but as far as the pi goes this is the fastest option.

zmmmmm 12y ago

The real "feature" of the Chromecast isn't technical. It's the ecosystem and particularly the fact it "just works" and is built in and enabled by default on a large number of Android apps. So for example, my friend can come over to my house and fire up his Google Music and his phone automatically sees my Chromecast and he can play to it. Or movies, or photos or ... etc etc. You can get any number of devices that do this, but only the Chromecast is built in and enabled by default on every Android device (not sure what iOS status is ...).

girvo 12y ago
iOS has AirPlay which is Apple's implementation of a Chromecast style local streaming service. I use it with an Apple TV myself.
- magicalist 12y ago
  There's an iOS SDK[1], so in theory developers can add AirPlay and Chromecast support to their app, but not sure how widespread that actually is. [1] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/ios_sender https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/ios_sender

TD-Linux 12y ago

Google wanted an Airplay competitor, and for whatever reason wanted to hobble it with the same restrictions as Airplay - a proprietary protocol to only let certain (closed source) programs stream to it, and prevent those programs from streaming to non-Google targets.

pinkyand 12y ago
> and for whatever reason wanted to hobble it with the same restrictions as Airplay They want to work with the big content companies. The end game might be ads on the chromecast served through Google with the stick is access to chromecast and the carrot is ad-optimization by Google and maybe blocking pirated content.
higherpurpose 12y ago
It's not "whatever reason". Google is in the content selling business now - which means they are going to add as much DRM and restrictions to their operating systems, browsers, and devices as possible, to either try to "protect it" (which I think we all know it never works), or to please their content suppliers. This is not just a constant thing we're seeing either. Expect Google to become ever more restrictive and anti-piracy, as they delve deeper into the content selling business. The days of the "Open Google" are long gone now, and they're never coming back.

ssully 12y ago

Easiest way I have found to watch Netflix. Also it's pretty nice for renting movies. I used to rent from Amazon and play off my ps3, but I have started renting from google play and throwing it on the chromecast. I also like that frequent guests(girlfriend) to my house can use it without having to ask me. It sounds like with your current set up a chromecast might only be slightly more convenient, so you might not be missing much.

jethro_tell 12y ago

I take it to hotel ls when i travel. Its tiny, Combined with my phone as a wifi i stream to the hotel tv with a tablet or laptop. easy small portable.

vidarh 12y ago

For me it's the convenience of being able to throw up various content from every device in the house (either via a dedicated app, or via chrome). It doesn't replace xbmc in any but when you want to e.g. play a youtube video, it's fantastically convenient for the low price.