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AirPlay Killer
- Thread starter chumawumba
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Airplay killer eh? OK...............
I guess playing Netflix, youtube and google cloud content is amazing, not to mention being forced to use your phone as a remote. Can't even stream video or audio from your phone.
Oh...that capability will be there...someday.
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Ok...lets give it a chance. It does fill a niche and give some people some capability they want to have and at a good price. That's a good thing. And if it gooses Apple into doing something more with the aTV...all the better!
The real prize goes to the company that can shift the entertainment industry (tv/cable) to a new paradigm, not to the company that makes a media streamer. There are bigger battles to be waged. Roku, aTV, Chromecast...all just little weapons in the war.
Actually you can, from Chrome browser with tab mirroring. Its beta however and has some glitches and limitations.
Tab casting only works from the desktop/laptop Chrome browser not the mobile Chrome browser.
-PN
Yes I know, but it is not unreasonable to assume in due time this feature will also come to phones. However, it seems to be limited to Chrome browser (no system wide setting, support for other applications etc.).
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Products that are hyped at presentation time and end up being less than promised? We've actually seen that from Apple more. A LOT more.
I'm happily entrenched in Apple's ecosystem and have 3 AppleTV's that I'm very happy with. But lets be honest, considering that the AppleTv originally came out in Jan 2007 then this is a product that has used that fake "hobby" label as an excuse for it's incredibly slow development. Where are the apps? Why is airplay streaming so slow to load? Why can't I use the USB port for a USB drive? What the heck is with their jumbled YouTube subscription list? Why such a limited remote (no replay button, twenty clicks to get to home screen)?
I strongly prefer AppleTV over all my other streamers (Roku, PS3, Plex and now a Chromecast) because it does so much right, but that doesn't mean it still does a LOT of things wrong.
Oh...that capability will be there...someday.
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Ok...lets give it a chance. It does fill a niche and give some people some capability they want to have and at a good price. That's a good thing. And if it gooses Apple into doing something more with the aTV...all the better!
The real prize goes to the company that can shift the entertainment industry (tv/cable) to a new paradigm, not to the company that makes a media streamer. There are bigger battles to be waged. Roku, aTV, Chromecast...all just little weapons in the war.
Yeah for sure... But why call something a "blah blah blah killer" when it still doesn't do something that the thing it "killed" does. That's retarded... Reminds me of when the blackberry storm came out and everyone called it an iPhone killer because of its potential not and not what it actually did (spoiler alert: it failed miserably at being any type of "iPhone killer").
From any screen hold down menu and it'll go to the home screen, no need to click it multiple times
To be fair, only the OP used "AirPlay Killer".
It's weird, if you look at the MR article on the device, there's over 200 posts of people wetting their pants over it (most having just ordered one) and a handful of posts from people that actually have used it. Yet it is sold out! I was that good, I would have thought this place would have been flooded with posts about how wonderful it is. Curious.
Is that true? That sucks, if so (about the USB power supply). I know this might sound silly, but that might keep it from being overwhelmingly successful.
Yeah my first reaction when I read about it was "omg so cool!" then I kind of thought about real world use and it really doesn't do much more than my xbmc setup. So I decided against it because I didn't want yet another device just sitting around. It's a good price for entry level media streaming IMO.
no Airplay killer but very nice product especially for the price.
Youtube
Netflix
Chrome mirroring
Music
especially for the price $35.00 is a nice deal!
Youtube
Netflix
Chrome mirroring
Music
especially for the price $35.00 is a nice deal!
I own 3 AppleTV's so I didnt think I'd have a use for this. But after making an impulse purchase ($35 + 3mo Netflix!) then I'm loving it. While the Chromecast doesn't necessarily do anything "new" compared to the aTV, it does do a few things better.
1) YouTube:
Lets face it, if you subscribe to a lot of YouTube feeds then the aTV YouTube app is broken. The subscription list has no logical order and there is no "new videos" feed which means you have to go to your computer or phone to see whats new and then manually look for it on the aTV.
But with the Chromecast then I can look at the "New Videos" feed on my laptop and start queueing up files. Apple could have easily fixed this issue years ago but they don't seem to care.
2) Mirroring/Multitasking
Before anyone says "There's mirroring on the OSX and iOS" then let me point out a few problems.
- Mac - This is true mirroring which sometimes can be a bad thing. If you're trying to stream a video through your browser then you can't do other things on the laptop and your $2000 computer suddenly becomes a dedicated streaming device.
- iPhone - This also has mirroring but it is not widescreen so if your app isn't aTV optimized then your 60" widescreen TV is now 4:3 with black pillars.
With Chromecast then you're only having the device fetch a video address or you're streaming a single tab off the computer. And that means you can stream something and actually do work on your laptop SIMULTANEOUSLY.
3) File Diversity
With AppleTV you can stream anything you can put in iTunes. Unfortunately that list is pretty short. But with Chromecast then all I do is drop an MKV or AVI into my chrome browser and tell it to stream to the Chromecast.
Again, I have a preference toward the AppleTV's because I live in the Apple Ecosystem, BUT, the ChromeCast is doing stuff that the Apple TV can't. And that's easily worth $35.
(BTW. For those who think this is a war and are furiously typing "JAILBREAK" as the answer to everything then save your keystrokes. We get it. Jailbreak is awesome, but its not for everyone.)
1) YouTube:
Lets face it, if you subscribe to a lot of YouTube feeds then the aTV YouTube app is broken. The subscription list has no logical order and there is no "new videos" feed which means you have to go to your computer or phone to see whats new and then manually look for it on the aTV.
But with the Chromecast then I can look at the "New Videos" feed on my laptop and start queueing up files. Apple could have easily fixed this issue years ago but they don't seem to care.
2) Mirroring/Multitasking
Before anyone says "There's mirroring on the OSX and iOS" then let me point out a few problems.
- Mac - This is true mirroring which sometimes can be a bad thing. If you're trying to stream a video through your browser then you can't do other things on the laptop and your $2000 computer suddenly becomes a dedicated streaming device.
- iPhone - This also has mirroring but it is not widescreen so if your app isn't aTV optimized then your 60" widescreen TV is now 4:3 with black pillars.
With Chromecast then you're only having the device fetch a video address or you're streaming a single tab off the computer. And that means you can stream something and actually do work on your laptop SIMULTANEOUSLY.
3) File Diversity
With AppleTV you can stream anything you can put in iTunes. Unfortunately that list is pretty short. But with Chromecast then all I do is drop an MKV or AVI into my chrome browser and tell it to stream to the Chromecast.
Again, I have a preference toward the AppleTV's because I live in the Apple Ecosystem, BUT, the ChromeCast is doing stuff that the Apple TV can't. And that's easily worth $35.
(BTW. For those who think this is a war and are furiously typing "JAILBREAK" as the answer to everything then save your keystrokes. We get it. Jailbreak is awesome, but its not for everyone.)
If you just want to stream a video through your browser to aTV, why on earth would you use AP Mirroring? Which means decompress video stream into RGB bitmap, render it in the framebuffer, grab it from framebuffer, compress it to AVC videostream and send it to aTV? Wouldn't it be much easier just to route the incoming stream to aTV? For Safari, you will just need the ClickToFlash plugin to do this.
http://www.macstories.net/reviews/clicktoplugin-brings-airplay-support-to-safari-for-mac/
I totally agree with you! I am a Apple maniac also! I have 2 AppleTv
this is deffenetly a nice way to share video/stream content over
I installed this and its a nice feature but if its freezes. Or you want to pause it on your laptop you can't. You would have to start over. You can pause it with your remote from appletv but once you start playing the video there is no control of that video on your computer. Nice little tweak but thats all it is
I don't know. I was reading the MR headline and comments after it were acting as if we just had the second coming (I mean that in a religious way). Here it's been a couple days, stocks all sold out and no one posting about how wonderful it is in actual use. Makes me wonder.
I just got mine yesterday. Once I've had some time to play around with it I'll post my findings.
Unless you're using AirPlay Mirroring, you can go off and do other things with your iPhone/iPad as well. Start up a song in Pandora, AirPlay it, then leave the app and use your iPhone for other things and the song keeps playing on your ATV. Same goes for any other app with built-in AirPlay support. OTOH, AirPlay Mirroring, by design, mirrors everything you see on your iPhone/iPad screen.
Bold added by me. This is highly subjective. Tab casting is using the power of your laptop's CPU to do on-the-fly transcoding of your content to a format that can be playable on the Chromecast's hardware. If you have a powerful enough laptop/desktop, it's possible that the quality is quite good. If Google adds support for tab-casting (a la AirPlay Mirroring) to the Android OS, I wouldn't hold out much hope that the video quality is going to be great, just as AirPlay Mirroring from an iPhone produces less-than-smooth video playback.
YMMV, but for me, I'm a stickler about this sort of thing and can't be happy watching choppy video.
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The easy solution to this is Plex. Install Plex Media Server on your desktop or laptop and you can then use the Plex app on your iPhone to watch a wide variety of video/audio filetypes. Chromecast's tab-casting is doing on-the-fly transcoding of the contents of your web tab, which is what Plex Media Server does, but I'd put my money on PMS doing a better job of transcoding and producing higher quality output compared to Google's plug-in.
I like the method that the Chromecast uses to let you find a show you want in your smartphone's Netflix app, then direct the Chromecast dongle to do the "heavy lifting" of fetching the video from the web. The Apple TV doesn't do this today, but there's no reason why the existing hardware couldn't easily support that method if Apple so desired. So I'd use the word *doesn't* rather than *can't*. OTOH, a better case can be made that the Apple TV actually does do things that the Chromecast hardware simply *can't* do, based on its more limited hardware specs.
VLC is also an option to AirPlay various formats, if you don't want to commit to the entire PLEX system.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/20/vlc-media-player-for-ipad-now-available-your-video-codec-worrie/
Seriously? People still use "it does't play MKV/AVI/DiVX/XviD/whatever other obscure format" as an argument against Apple TV and Apple's ecosystem?
The world has standardized on H.264 video and AAC audio. Even "the scene" no longer uses AVI/XViD, all new releases are H.264. Do yourself a favor and convert your old AVI's to MP4/H.264, and make your life easier.
A refreshing breath of fresh air!!! You are right on target. But you are going to take some grief for the "quality loss" doing the conversion.
But you are going to take some grief for the "quality loss" doing the conversion.
Oh yeah, I am sure "the quality" of that old 480p AVI bit-torrented 5 years ago is going to take a HUGE hit during the H.264 conversion!
And youre seriously going to say "convert every single file to an iTunes compatible format then tag and label them properly" actually "makes life easier"?
Dont live in a bubble and pretend that iTunes is a file friendly media client.
From what I understand I don't think that will work, since Chromecast does not support MKV or AVI containers (see here). So, basically the only way to do this would be to render the video on the computer, capture the framebuffer, re-compress it to H.264, and send that to the Chromecast. But that is exactly the same as Airplay mirroring to an Apple TV.
Not every video file is a movie that requires the absolute best video quality. For example, home movies. I've got hundreds of clips of my kids that I dont want to put in my iTunes Library. With Chromecast I just drag a file to my mirrored tab and now everyone sees it. I'm sure there's a hundred other methods to get this done, but now theres a hundred and one.
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I just moved my Chromecast from the Bedroom TV to the Living Room to stream some home video and it worked fine. Again, I know that Google didn't invent anything with the Chromecast, but they did make a simple and affordable solution that works. And with Apple's tendency to get lazy when they own marketshare then competition is good for everyone.
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Who said anything about "iTunes"? We were talking about media formats (H.264 etc), which doesn't have anything to with iTunes (which is just a media manager). If you don't like iTunes and don't want to tag your content - use something else, like Plex. But you will still be better off sticking with modern & industry standard formats like H.264/AAC, and throwing AVIs into trashbin where they belong.