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Walt Mossberg gives ChromeCast Thumb-up
- Thread starter Mrbobb
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I see the potential with the chromecast but right now after actually buying it im leaning towards returning it. The price is great but the real jewel to me was streaming what ever is on the chrome browser and that has been well not as smooth as i would like. Granted this is on older hardware but still its almost like whats the point for me. Ideally i would use it as an extra netflix player but knowing my parents who have enough trouble with the apple tv and had no idea how to get netflix to work with a ps3 i know its asking for trouble. Maybe version 2.0 will be better?
DaveN
macrumors 6502a
Chrome cast is not in my future for two reasons. First, I travel in an rv. I can stream from my iPad to AppleTV without a Internet connection. That can't be done with Chromecast. Secondly, by streaming everything through Googles servers, they can, and probably will, keep track of all your activity. No thank you.
shyam09
macrumors 68020
meh ... but that's just movie / music / youtube preference ... not really important stuff
DaveN
macrumors 6502a
Think of all the video snippets you see on the web. Any time you want to stream any of those (political, adult, satire, etc.) to your TV, it is tracked by the same company that knows about your online banking, affiliations, etc. Big brother is here and he is reading your Gmail.
I'm I paranoid? I don't think I am. I just expect some privacy and don't like people tracking my every move. Google doesn't disclose everything they do. Why should I?
I also use a fake name when registering for those stupid grocery store discount cards. Sheesh, a 'membership' card to get the sale price? One place wanted to scan my drivers license. I said really? You want my driver's license so I can buy a bag of potato chips? I passed on their 'kind' offer.
Huh? No you can't.
What is cool about Chromecast is that anybody with a mobile device on the network can play content to the Chromecast. It doesn't require the Chromecast to be logged into to any app as the authentication happens on the phone. So one person can play a youtube video from their iPhone and another person can play a Netflix video from their Android phone without any setup on the Chromecast.
It's certainly not a Apple TV killer. But it has huge potential especially if it is built into TVs. It works great for a family or someone who has people over all the time.
This is not for people with smart tvs.
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Actually, Robert Heron observed that he was able to cast to his smart tv using just the chromecast app, without his Chromecast installed.
Don't know why that would work, but it did. The app is free. Something to think about.
ZeRoLiMiT
macrumors 6502a
That's what I said if you have a SMART Tv with google app you can use it like ChromeCast
Kebabselector
macrumors 68030
Looks as if Google has broken 3rd party access to Chromecast now.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/26/google_cripples_chromecast_third_party_replay/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/26/google_cripples_chromecast_third_party_replay/
No. He was able to use DIAL support in the Netflix app which acts like Chromecast except it requires the app be installed on the host. It doesn't have the potential of Chromecast because it can't run HTML5 apps and requires the host app be installed and setup. Netflix and Youtube have supported dial for several months. Btw, the Chromecast app itself does nothing but set it up.