Chromecast

An appropriately titled lifehacker post: Four Things You Didn't Know You Can Do With Your Chromecast:

"Forget your TV remote—if you have a Chromecast hooked up and always powered on through the usb adapter, you can turn your TV on and even switch to the Chromecast's input with your mobile device."

Sure enough, it worked like magic. I had always been turning on the TV and switching the input.

Chromecast

Some have complained that the Chromecast is too limited, but I bought it to stream Netflix. If it does anything else, than that is just gravy.

I hooked it up this morning. It took about 10 minutes. Like my thermostat, it advertises a wireless network that you connect to from a laptop/phone/tablet. Once you've connected, you supply the information for your home network and the Chromecast will connect to it.

Once I got it on my network, I opened Netflix on my iPad and told it to send the stream to the TV. It worked like a champ!

The only thing that is a bit clunky is that you have to plug the dongle into a USB charger for power. That keeps it from being 100% wireless all the time, but that's a minor quibble in my book.

Chromecast

I like my Chromecast and got it when you got some free Netflix, so it was a great deal for me. Amazon has the Chromecast for $29.99 with free ship (saving $5.01).

Chromecast

Chromecast - a $35 (plus shipping/tax) HDMI dongle for streaming video to your TV. It will stream from Chrome, Youtube, and Netflix. They same more to come - Amazon maybe? You can control it from a PC or tablet. Buy now and you get 3 months of Netflix free. I have a Wii for Netflix in our living room, but the TV in our bedroom isn't connected at all.

I'm in for one.

harrymccracken Now Google’s unveiling Chromecast, a tiny HD-streaming gizmo you plug into a TV’s HDMI. Yup, another Google approach to Net-enabling TVs. Wed, Jul 24 12:51:50 from Tweetbot for iOS

Chromecast: MLS and WatchESPN

I mentioned the Chromecast yesterday and then saw this:

"This means that next week, U.S. soccer fans will have the ability to watch all 64 World Cup games with the tap of the cast button (vuvuzelas not included). Of course, in addition to soccer, you can also cast all of ESPN's other sports content, from the NBA Finals and X Games to college football."

Chromecast Teardown

Chromecast Teardown

(So this is how you take something apart without trashing it.)

Chromecast Humor

Check out the model numbers on Chromecast and its charger.

HBO Go on Chromecast

My Chromecast just became more valuable to me - it now works with HBO Go!

MatchStick

Mozilla announced Matchstick, a $25 Firefox OS HDMI dongle, to compete with Chromecast.

Via Slashdot.org

Gadgets

Gadgets are dead. Long live the (cheap) gadgets.:

"Amazon doesn't need to make money on the Echo itself, as long as it drives more commerce to its retail business. Same with Google: as long as the Chromecast gets more people to watch YouTube videos and download more stuff from Google Play, they don't have to make money from the gadget itself." 

"This trend isn't going to kill off the smartphone, or the PC, or the tablet. But it means lower-cost gadgetry that lasts a lot longer. We're only seeing the early stages of this shift now, but it has a lot of potential to shake up how we think about and how we buy our devices."