Google Launches The Chromecast To Bring Chrome To The Living Room

The obvious question: Why would you buy this if you already had an Apple TV (or were considering buying one)?<p>* Cross-platform support, not just iDevices<p>* For apps that integrate with the SDK (currently Youtube &amp; Netflix, but I am sure more will be coming soon), the processing of the content can be transferred to the the Chromecast. Hence, once you &quot;flick&quot; your Netflix content to Chromecast, your phone is free and not processing content anymore unlike Airplay, which is a huge win for your phone&#x27;s battery.<p>* All your phones&#x2F;tablets&#x2F;computers become your remote&#x2F;controllers.<p>* The price (at $35, it&#x27;s a relatively low-risk impulse buy)<p>* UPDATE: It automatically switches to the HDMI input channel when streamed, atleast on my LG TV. My 3rd gen Apple TV doesn&#x27;t so I have to find the TV remote to switch HDMI inputs, which can sometimes be annoying.

&gt; Note: You may not publicly distribute or ship your Google Cast application without written permission from Google, per the terms of service described below.<p><a href="https://developers.google.com/cast/downloads/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.google.com&#x2F;cast&#x2F;downloads&#x2F;</a><p>&gt; YOU MAY NOT PUBLICLY DISTRIBUTE CODE CONTAINING THIS SDK OR REFERENCING THESE APIs WITHOUT A WRITTEN AGREEMENT WITH GOOGLE ALLOWING YOU TO DO SO.<p>&gt; By accessing the download links below, you indicate that you have read and accept Google&#x27;s API Terms and further agree not to publicly distribute code containing the SDK and APIs accessed through the links below unless and until you enter a written agreement with Google providing such permission.<p>&gt; If you wish to discuss shipping your apps, please write us at chromecast-updates@google.com

Awesome. This will nicely round out my HTPC setup. I have an R-Pi running XBMC along with an MK802ii on which I&#x27;ve built a system which lets me trigger music playback from XBMC using RFID cards.<p><a href="http://fuzzysprojects.wordpress.com/rfid-triggered-music/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fuzzysprojects.wordpress.com&#x2F;rfid-triggered-music&#x2F;</a><p>I had been working on a way to get youtube vids to playback in XBMC by firing a json call at it, but with out spending time hacking together my own chrome extension I was never going to be able to make it easy enough for my wife to do.<p>I had already made the purchase before I headed here to the comments and noticed that it also came with 3 months of netflix. Nice bonus.<p>PS: the learn more link isn&#x27;t working atm: <a href="http://www.google.com/chromecast" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;chromecast</a>

Absolutely blown away by this. This might just lead us one step closer to the grand unification of devices in the living room that has long been dreamed of.<p>I&#x27;m more excited about this than the xbox one announcement that&#x27;s for sure.<p>The price is unbelievable ($35)...an impulse buy.<p><i>edit</i> (come to think of it I&#x27;d bet we&#x27;ll start seeing &quot;chromecast ready TVs&quot; by Christmas.

It seems like existing Netflix customers have a strong incentive to &quot;buy&quot; the Chromecast since it is essentially free as long as your Netflix plan is $12&#x2F;month or more:<p><i>Once your Chromecast ships, you will recieve an email with a promotional code for 3 months of Netflix. Offer valid for previous, new and existing Netflix members, one per Netflix account. </i>

I love this. Last year I was super-excited about the Nexus Q (I have my I&#x2F;O freebie in a box somewhere) but was disappointed by a) the price and b) the lack of an SDK.<p>A year later, we get ChromeCast. It&#x27;s a tenth of the size, a tenth of the price, and supports every device in my home. I&#x27;m glad Google decided not to run with the Q and had the balls to pull it out of production while they (I assume) worked on ChromeCast.

It&#x27;s not clear to me what this means for Google TV, which, it seems, has long been a bastard stepchild in the Google consumer product family. If I both wanted to play games and take advantage of Chromecast apps on my other devices, I guess I would need both? Or maybe there will be a Chromecast receiver app for Google TV?<p>More broadly, this seems symptomatic of the continued tension between the Chrome and Android platforms within Google, since this is yet another space where they&#x27;re stepping on each other&#x27;s toes without obvious rhyme or reason from a consumer perspective.

I just ordered one. Impulse buy on my part - but with a SDK + support for multiple devices, I have high hopes for it. Looks really awesome, and it&#x27;ll probably land up being pretty hackable. :D

Looks like you can order it now (with 3 months free on Netflix): <a href="https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=chromecast" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;devices&#x2F;details?id=chromecast</a>

I guess I am the only who is not particularly excited about this. Other than the price it is a &quot;me too&quot; response to AppleTV.<p>One of the most annoying thing about these devices is that because the lack of storage, they need to be streaming all the time (which is a problem with connections with a cap like in Canada) which is very inconvenient if you want to buy movies on iTunes&#x2F;Google Play.<p>AppleTV enables game devs to use the TV as a separate common screen for multi users games but that feature seems to be missing with the Chromecast (or at least I couldn&#x27;t find any reference to it)<p>So as an AppleTV owner I just can&#x27;t help but to think this as a &quot;meh&quot;

As a longtime AirPlay user, I find this less exciting since AirPlay works with pretty much anything that&#x27;s on your iDevice. That said, cross platform is interesting.

&quot;Powered by usb&quot; is confusing. Does it have to be plugged into a computer to work? Or just a USB power source like a charger?<p>EDIT: Engadget article has more info, looks like just USB power. Exciting! <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/24/google-chromekey/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;07&#x2F;24&#x2F;google-chromekey&#x2F;</a>

Just ordered mine.<p>I continue to be impressed by the uses Google has found for Chrome. Building new features into Chrome gives Google the capabilities of a full desktop application without the need to convince users to install new software. Google can just issue an update to Chrome to instantly ship new projects to ~20% of web users.

I&#x27;m extremely surprised that Google actually added this to Google TV. I figured, at this point, that my 3-year-old Revue box was long-forgotten by Google.<p>The &quot;play on Google TV&quot; button showed up on both my desktop (in Chrome) and phone (in the YouTube app) some weeks or months ago, I&#x27;m not sure. It works just like this Chromecast thing was described -- whatever I was watching on the other device shows up on the TV and playback can be controlled from either side.

Hmm... can I only stream from Chrome? What about my local movie collection?

I&#x27;m pretty excited about this. At Google, we use Hangouts to share our laptop&#x27;s screen with TVs in the conference rooms (for meetings, presentations, that sort of thing), and I&#x27;ve always wanted a way to do this easily at home. I&#x27;m much too lazy to plug my laptop into the TV, after all :)<p>Sounds like we finally have the answer!

Too bad it doesn&#x27;t work with Chromebooks (other than the pixel). I understand that we&#x27;re lucky that the ARM-based models can even handle hi-res video at all, but I&#x27;d think the Intel-based Acer could handle this too.

This is only useful to me if it also is supported by a major Windows media player like VLC. What I like about AirPlay is that I can flick something from my phone to the TV, but also from iTunes (blech) to the TV. I would love to have a solution that did not involve iTunes. I love that the price is 1&#x2F;3 of the Apple TV.

The biggest news here is that the dongle is running a version of Chrome, not Android.

Can I push a chrome tab to this thing and then shut off my laptop and have the tab still displayed on the chrome key? I&#x27;m thinking of using this for all of the dashboards in our office, at $35 each, that would be awesome.

I wonder what the SoC is on this, and if it runs Android. I assume it has some UI for connecting to WiFi, so conceivably it could be like those cheap Android HDMI dongles inside.

Can I use this without creating or logging into a Google account?

The easiest way to connect my PC to a HDTV is my HDMI cable.

The fine print says &quot;power cord not shown.&quot; I&#x27;m assuming for this is the device itself? Shouldn&#x27;t it be able to power through USB?

Will it work if I inserted Chromecast into HDMI port of my monitor rather than a TV?

I don&#x27;t see this thing on Amazon.com (US store). Am I missing something?

NSA, US government, tyrants everywhere, watch Google carefully for how it&#x27;s done. For a fickle crowd like Hacker News, you can seize their liberty and human rights <i>easily</i> - just distract them with shiny new things.<p>For shiny new toys, some people will rationalize anything ;-)

No love for Miracast

How does it power itself? Does HDMI provide power?

Can it playback DIVX&#x2F;XVID?

I&#x27;m oddly very very excited about this especially considering the price point ($35), the size and the cross-platform support.

Why the fuck doesn&#x27;t Wall Street like this? GOOG&#x27;s been going down since the presentation started.