And More:
Hacks http://readwrite.com/2013/07/30/chromecast-tips-tricks-workarounds-hacks-advice#awesm=~od7Sj78QIM2D2q
WHAT you Can WATCH On Chormecast and HOW
One of the most common questions I hear about Google's new Chromecast gadget is, "What can I watch on it?" That's a fair question, considering that Google only mentioned a few streaming resources—primarily YouTube and Netflix—at its press event last week.
That's because only four services (see below) currently support the Google Cast technology that lets you beam streaming video straight to your TV from the Web, using a phone or tablet as a remote control. But you don't have to rely on streaming providers to adopt Google Cast. You can also stream to Chromecast from the Chrome browser on a PC or Mac, thanks to a process Google calls tab casting.
That expands your immediate horizons quite a bit. And app developers big and small are also looking to jump on the Chromecast bandwagon, which would further open things up.
Your current options, however, vary depending on your tech setup and other factors, so read on to see the breakdown of what you can watch, and how, using Chromecast.
Streaming Resources That Support Chromecast
Google devised a creative method of streaming that, upon demand, enables Chromecast to pull in the requested media directly from the Web. For services that support this, the TV streaming action starts by tapping a "cast" button or link that sits directly in those websites and/or mobile apps.
Out of the box, the Chromecast works with a small group of "starter" services:
- Netflix - mobile app and website
- YouTube - mobile app and website
- Google Play Movies & TV - mobile app (Android only)
- Google Play Music - mobile app (Android only)
Since these streams flow in from the Internet, there's no major battery or performance hit for the originating smartphone, tablet or laptop. And those devices can control the playback, pause and volume rather easily.
Google doesn't offer iOS apps for its own Play services, and oddly enough I couldn't find a "cast" option on their websites. I did, however, manage to stream them from my laptop via tab casting.
Resources That Work Via Tab Casting
Tab casting, a beta feature, essentially lets the Chromecast mirror one of your Chrome browser tabs. This allows you to play local files, shared online playlists and other streaming media websites.
Via tab casting, in fact, you can watch (or listen to) a whole bunch of stuff, including:
- Amazon Instant Video; ABC; AOL; CBS
- Crackle; Fox; Google Plus photos/slideshows
- HBO Go; Hulu; Justin.TV; NBC
- MLB.TV; Pandora; Plex; Post TV
- Qello; Rdio; Revision 3; Slacker
- Songza; Spotify; Vimeo
And much, much more. Coincidentally (or not), many of these streaming services are looking at Chromecast integration similar to what Netflix and YouTube offer. Google spotlighted Pandora, and HBO is looking into Chromecast support. Meanwhile, Plex, Redbox Instant and Vimeo, among others, are hinting (often broadly) at their interest as well.
While all that Chromecast integration gets underway, what you need to know about tab casting is that it works on most streaming sites, excepting videos that use the Silverlight and Quicktime plugins. I tried Apple's Quicktime-based online movie trailers, for instance, and the audio stubbornly stayed on the computer. It simply refused to pipe to the TV.
There are other catches as well. Tab casting works best if the source computer has decent processing power and works off a solid Wi-Fi network. Otherwise, lags and stutters will likely plague the stream. In addition, tab casting only works on tabs from Chrome's desktop browser (for now); no mobile version on any platform can cast tabs.
Tab-casted streams aren't controllable via mobile devices either. You have to go back to the original computer to stop, pause or scrub the playback, and without benefit of a dedicated TV-oriented interface.
File types can also make a big difference. Here's what Google listed under "Supported Media Types":
All Google Cast devices at a minimum support the following media types:Video codecs: H.264 High Profile Level 4.1, 4.2 and 5, VP8 Audio decoding: HE-AAC, LC-AAC, CELT/OPUS, MP3 Containers: MP4/CENC, WebM, MPEG-DASH, SmoothStreaming Level 1 DRM support: Widevine, Playready Subtitles: TTML - Timed Text Markup Language WebVTT - Web Video Text Tracks
If you're not well-versed in audio or video codecs, here's a general rule of thumb: In most cases, media that plays fine in a Chrome browser tab can be sent to and played by Chromecast. But also know that in some cases, audio playback could suffer somewhat.
If you have local files that Chrome won't open, and can only play it in a separate standalone computer program, you could play it and cast your entire desktop to the TV. But this an act of desperation. Screen casting doesn't pipe audio to Chromecast, and the stream can be buggy, especially if you don't have a powerful computer.
Still, if you're so inclined, it's something you can play around with. To try it, open the Chrome browser on your desktop, hit the "cast" extensions button, click the small arrow to release a drop-down menu, and choose "Cast entire screen (experimental)."
More Will Come Streaming In Soon
Casting from a computer is a stop-gap measure—some fill-in functionality to keep you going until more streaming companies support Chromecast directly. By the looks of it, a lot of them are interested in doing just that.
That's to Google's credit. When it unveiled Chromecast, it also debuted a Google Cast software developer kit. With this SDK, app makers can easily build in Chromecast support for new and existing mobile and Web apps, says the tech giant, in less than 200 lines of code. If Google isn't exaggerating things, that's pretty simple.
To recap, Google managed to release cheap streaming devices that are in high demand, and it appears to have paved the way for developers to climb onto the Chromecast bandwagon. So even if you're disappointed by what Chromecast offers at this moment, the odds seem good that more streams will be flowing your way before much longer.
Dell, the company once synonymous with the PC market, now looks like it wants to kill the traditional desktop. It’s just shipped to beta testers the first of its Project Ophelia devices: an over-sized USB stick that turns any HDMI-capable screen into a computer running off the cloud.
First shown of at CES, the key concept behind Ophelia has been familiar to tech enthusiasts for a while (the reasoning behind the name is unknown, some wag presumably just thought the idea was insane) and is about to hit the mainstream with Google’s newly-launchedChromecast.
It goes like this: you know your TV? Isn’t it massive and didn’t you spend a lot of money on it? And don’t you use it a lot less than you use to? Well, plug this dongle into it (yes, yes, get used to using that word) with a one-two USB plus HDMI connection and boom – your TV just got computered up.
However, with Project Ophelia Dell has one more trick up its sleeve, and that’s its cloud capacity. Last year Dell bought Wyse, a company that specialises in cloud-based computing services and virtual desktop environments.
The resulting collaboration between the two companies (Dell’s Wyse PocketCloud) means that Project Ophelia will allow users to run Windows, Mac OS, Chrome OS or Android on their screen of choice.
The dongle itself will barely be ticking over (there’s not much in it beyond an ARM Cortex-A9 processor and 1GB of RAM) but on the other end of its WiFi connection Dell’s cloud servers will be running virtual computers and streaming this work over to the consumer.
Of course, this won’t be convenient (or perhaps even possible) for all users but – as Google have pushed with their Chromecast - there’s also a world of Android apps to take advantage of. Factor in the fact that more software products are becoming cloud-based services (think Microsoft’s Office becoming Office 365) and the Ophelia seems more and more plausible.
Of course, the banner headlines behind the story come with a wealth of caveats: the plug-in HDMI gizmos are still incredibly underwhelming as a user-experience; the majority of the professional business world will be sticking with traditional computers for the foreseeable future; and if connections between mobile devices and TVs become easier to access, then you may as well stick with keeping your processing power in your hand.
An extra ‘complication’ is the fact that Dell are still the world’s third-largest PC manufacturer, despite losing market share to companies like Lenovo, who have muscled in on Dell’s high-volume, low-margin business model.
Christopher Mims of Quartz has speculated that the logic of a company likeDell making the Ophelia only makes sense once you factor in that the company is in the middle of a leveraged buyout, with CEO Michael Dellattempting to things private.
Mims suggests that once the buyout is complete, the company could sell off the bits of its PC business still turning a buck and use the cash from the sales (which would add to the $14 billion they currently have) to perform a “breathtaking turnaround” and become “a company that sells services and software”.
Whether this hopeful vision for the future of Dell will ever come to pass is impossible to predict, especially with the buyout still uncertain. The final version of Ophelia is due to ship sometime in the next fiscal quarter between August and October and will cost approximately $100; if the Chromecast and similar devices prove popular in the interim, it might be launching into a receptive market - Ophelia might turn out to be not so crazy after all.
How Google's Chromecast Lets Down iPhone Users
The compromises of using a Google device with Apple's iOS devices.
I've had a Chromecastic week playing around with Google's $35 streaming device. Overall, I've come away with positive impressions. Then again, it's easy to be forgiving when a new gadget costs less than dinner at a middle-of-the-road restaurant.
But that forgiveness is key. I'm an iPhone user, and it has become increasingly apparent that Chromecast sometimes works rather fitfully with Apple gear. That's a tough pill to swallow given the attention Google lavished on the Chromecast's touted ability to work across Android and iDevices alike—and the fact that Android phones and tablets handle the streaming so well.
True, the disconnect isn't necessarily surprising. Among other things, there was never much chance that Apple would help optimize the Chromecast experience on iOS. Certainly not in the service of its arch rival, and definitely not for features that compete with its own Apple TV and Airplay.
So for iPhone and iPad users, Chromecast comes with some compromises—namely a dearth of compatible apps and a rough-around-the-edges experience.
The iOS App Fail
Android users have a handy native Chromecast mobile app to set up and manage the device's settings. So do Mac and Windows users. iPhone users, however, don't. It's not clear if Google simply hasn't submitted it to the App Store or if Apple is holding back approval, but either way it's not available. So to configure the streaming stick, we have to do it online from our mobile Web browser.
That's not so bad, except that—unlike the Chromecast app—this doesn't allow you to later tweak those settings from an iDevice. So if you want to change networks, Wi-Fi passwords, rename the device or remote reboot/factory reset it, you have to put down your iPhone and pick up a laptop. Or borrow a friend's Android gadget.
(Note: If you don't mind digging behind your TV and grabbing hold of the device, you can do a manual factory reset by pressing and holding the physical button for 25+ seconds, or until the light starts to flash.)
When it comes to apps, there's an even peskier issue—the actual streaming. Only four mobile apps directly support Chromecast at this moment, and two of them—Google Play Music and Google Play Movies & TV—aren't available for iOS users. We can listen to Google Play Music via Safari and mobile Chrome, sure, but we can't beam that music to the TV.
This is no iOS-specific quirk. It's not currently possible to do tab casting from any phone or tablet, which means mobile users have to rely solely on apps. And that's a problem for a platform that only has two Chromecast-compatible apps available. So if you're an iPhone or iPad owner, get used to the fact that while Android users may have Netflix, YouTube, Google Play Music and Google Play Movies & TV apps at their disposal, you only have the first two right now. (It's quite possible you won't care, but that's a separate issue.)
The Bugs
Worse, with one of those two remaining apps, iOS users face further compromises. If, for instance, you assumed that Google-owned YouTube would perform better than Netflix, you'd be mistaken—and the disappointment is especially acute on iOS.
I tested Chromecasting from YouTube on both an iPhone 5 and the new Nexus 7 tablet. Here's what I found:
Casting a video to the TV and remote controlling it from the same device worked well in both cases. Since Google also hyped remote control swapping between devices, I gave that a go too. At various times, both had trouble detecting the current stream. But the Android picked it up more easily than the iOS device. I just tapped the "cast" button and selected Chromecast, and the tablet locked on. With the iPhone, that only worked half the time.
I tried another feature: resumptive playback. I casted a YouTube video from the tablet to the TV, and tried to continue it from the same point on my iPhone. It worked. Then I tried to send it back to Chromecast. That was less successful. I tried several times, and often my handset just didn't want to let it go, no matter how many times I tapped the "cast" button.
The Experience
The Netflix app works better on both iOS and Android, and perhaps it should. The company has a lot of experience with streaming and resumptive playback. It also made Chromecast remote controls easier to find. Whenever a Netflix video casts to the TV, a blue banner shows up on every page within the app. No hunting around; users just tap the banner to jump back to the streaming video and its controls.
In contrast, YouTube's iPhone app hides away the casting notification in a side tray that only shows up when the user swipes the screen from the left.
This side tray also holds the TV Queue. Google hyped this feature, which lets multiple YouTube users create a single Chromecast playlist from different devices. It works differently on iOS than Android. Creating or adding videos to the queue was easy and obvious on my Nexus. Once I had a connection to the Chromecast, an "add it to the TV Queue" immediately showed up on YouTube videos.
Once again, on the iPhone, that feature's buried—this time under the "share" icon in the upper right. I have no idea why the iOS app handles such features differently than the Android version, so I asked YouTube to weigh in on that. I'll update this post if I get a response. As of publication, I hadn't heard back.
But this ease of use issue goes beyond any single app. Chromecast remote controls are available everywhere on Android. Starting a stream on the Nexus puts an icon in the top left, complete with drop-down controls like play and pause. This stays available, even if you return to the homescreen or use another app. And when the tablet sleeps, touching the screen puts the full-size controls front and center.
iOS users don't get these user-friendly benefits. Instead, we have to fumble around to turn on our iPhones or iPads, enter the app that originated the stream and find the controls in there somewhere. I asked Apple if there was any possibility of Chromecast remote controls showing up in the app tray, like Pandora's do, or landing on the lockscreen. Predictably, there was no response.
Final Thoughts
In general, Chromecast on iOS feels rough around the edges. And maybe it wouldn't, if it didn't pale in comparison to the experience on Android. Little things, like where to put the remote controls, can make a big difference. No one wants to lose track of which video they're casting or search around just to pause a streaming video.
And yet, it's a compromise I'm putting up with to save a little cash. If it was crucial to have a device that worked perfectly with my iPhone or iPad, that could stream lots of media—including my iTunes library, as well as those from other apps—I would have splurged on an Apple TV instead. But I didn't. I bought a cheap streaming stick. And so, I take the issues above in stride and adjust my expectations.
Of course, it helps greatly that app makers seem intensely interested in Chromecast, so the offerings will likely expand soon.
Still, one person's annoying compromises can be another's unforgivable problems. If you fall in the latter camp, then there are certainly better, more cohesive experiences available. That is, if you're willing to pay for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.