Google wanted an Airplay competitor, and for whatever reason wanted to hobble it with the same restrictions as Airplay - a proprietary protocol to only let certain (closed source) programs stream to it, and prevent those programs from streaming to non-Google targets.

It's not "whatever reason". Google is in the content selling business now - which means they are going to add as much DRM and restrictions to their operating systems, browsers, and devices as possible, to either try to "protect it" (which I think we all know it never works), or to please their content suppliers.

This is not just a constant thing we're seeing either. Expect Google to become ever more restrictive and anti-piracy, as they delve deeper into the content selling business. The days of the "Open Google" are long gone now, and they're never coming back.

> and for whatever reason wanted to hobble it with the same restrictions as Airplay

They want to work with the big content companies. The end game might be ads on the chromecast served through Google with the stick is access to chromecast and the carrot is ad-optimization by Google and maybe blocking pirated content.

$35 and let's me use my phone as my remote for Netflix, HBO Go, and Hulu. Drop dead simple casting. Also it doesn't stream from the phone; it simply takes in commands so it might save your battery some.

Don't forget plex, entire chrome tabs, podcasts, photo libraries etc.

Phones are poor remotes.

I used to feel the same way.

Then, I gave away my Apple TV and bought a Chromecast. Searching for content.. jumping between content sources.. it's all easier on the phone.

Did you try Apple's Remote app with Apple TV? Is it still worse than Chromecast?

I did--I wasn't a fan.

What I like about Chromecast is that their integration is simply a small button added to other apps that I'm already familiar with.

For example, I use Netflix as normal but basically choose where the output should go. It's actually quite similar to Apple's AirPlay integration although the Chromecast has never had an issue (AirPlay always seemed to have latency issues).

Not if the phone is out of battery.

Not if you want to pick what to watch with someone else.

> Not if the phone is out of battery.

Bad argument. Any remote control can run out of battery.

Well, for starters this is decidedly and completely untrue.

But moreover, when your phone dies and you're using it as a remote at home, you likely have the charger right there are home too. When the AAAs in your dedicated remote die (though PERHAPS more infrequently) you need to go running around to see where you shoved that container of AAAs, find that they're all actually the dead ones, and then go to the store.

Perhaps? Why are we beating around the bush, does your remote battery die enough that you even have a concept of how long the battery lasts (I don't. Is it 6 months, a year, 2? No idea, too infrequent to expend brain-space on)?

Battery is only the second worst part about using a phone as a remote, the worst being that a phone is anti-social while watching television (on a television) is social.

My phone is the one device I know will always have battery, because it is important enough for me that I always charge it. It's also the one device I know I will always have near me.

You won't have it near you if you are currently charging it.

What kind of geek doesn't have a USB charging port or two built in to (or close enough to) their couch? Couch charging has been the default for my wife for ages...

With certain apps they actually added a pretty nice function for this. Youtube is one in particular that can queue up videos on a Chromecast from multiple devices.

So grab your tablet. Or a laptop and cast the entire tab so people can see it on the TV.

Sounds like a lot of work. Why go digging in your closet when Netflix is a click away.

For flipping channels, but not for searching for content (Netflix). It's maddening to search with a conventional remote.

The phone is a poor remote like democracy is a bad system of gov't.

If your remote has a keyboard on it then more power to you, but none of mine do, and the phone is 1000x easier.

There's no need to downvote someone just because you disagree with them.

For my money, the best remote I ever used was the original TiVo. There's something a lot more haptic about a physical remote with real buttons. And I have yet to see a Chromecast remote app that's very good. Where's the dedicated "skip back 9 seconds" button? Or "turn close captioning on"? These are things I do all the time while watching shows.

BOTH of those are available on the Chromecast Netflix, Youtube, and Plex apps.

My TV remote has a keyboard - it's absolutely garbage.

Compared to what? The big thing I like about phones as remotes is that its the same device. I don't need a tv remote / dvd etc

Phones are so much better than e.g. the Roku remote with on-screen keyboard and d-pad.

Easiest way I have found to watch Netflix. Also it's pretty nice for renting movies. I used to rent from Amazon and play off my ps3, but I have started renting from google play and throwing it on the chromecast. I also like that frequent guests(girlfriend) to my house can use it without having to ask me.

It sounds like with your current set up a chromecast might only be slightly more convenient, so you might not be missing much.

For me the main selling point is the low price and not sure it makes sense if you have something setup to do most of it. I do use mine a ton for netflix, hulu (via tab casting) and arbitray media files via the videostream chrome extension/app from the webstore.

It has a simple unintrusive ui which is nice.

Hey - thanks for answering. The price is about the same (and I have the Pi). So that's mostly an argument for 'why not' and 'you might waste $35, but nothing more'.

Netflix/Hulu - no user myself and I'm not sure if those services are available outside of the US/available in DE. Tab casting, as far as I understand that, is a Chrome feature. I'm a Firefox guy. Would I be able to do something useful with that device?

Right now it seems like it would be equivalent to the Pi w/ xbmc, in an arguably smaller/nicer package. I'm hoping for a killer feature that I haven't considered/noticed :)

Firefox did add tab casting for the Chromecast to its Android version (https://plus.google.com/+LucasRocha/posts/AJtJ3faZXtJ).

I'm basically in the same situation as you. I already have Raspbmc set up on my Raspberry Pi, and see little reason to purchase a Chromecast. In my understanding, the "killer feature" is that it's supported by an increasingly large number of Android apps, which don't have support for casting to arbitrary UPnP targets as far as I'm aware.

BubbleUPNP https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft... happily casts media from dlna to my chromecast, might want to check it out.

Chromecast, Pi + xbmc user from DE here.

Currently my main applications used by my chromecast are watchever (a service like netflix), twitch (using a third party app shame on me ;)) and youtube while I use the Pi mainly for "offline" media.

The most appealing feature of the chromecast is that it "just works" and I never had major problem with it (super easy setup, great integration into existing apps, turns on the tv once it is activated on my phone and so on). For me it delivers on the promises, which manufacturers of "smart TVs" made but failed to achieve in their products.

Thank you for the pointer to the videostream app. I've been wondering how to do this for a couple weeks now!

The real "feature" of the Chromecast isn't technical. It's the ecosystem and particularly the fact it "just works" and is built in and enabled by default on a large number of Android apps. So for example, my friend can come over to my house and fire up his Google Music and his phone automatically sees my Chromecast and he can play to it. Or movies, or photos or ... etc etc. You can get any number of devices that do this, but only the Chromecast is built in and enabled by default on every Android device (not sure what iOS status is ...).

iOS has AirPlay which is Apple's implementation of a Chromecast style local streaming service. I use it with an Apple TV myself.

There's an iOS SDK[1], so in theory developers can add AirPlay and Chromecast support to their app, but not sure how widespread that actually is.

[1] https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/ios_sender

I had one for two weeks and found it overly pointless and another chunk of ecosystem tie in so I gave it to a friend. It has been passed on already.

I reverted back to using foobar2000 on windows with the upnp plugin and my Sony DLNA capable TV for all local media (and a USB stick for mp3s rsync'ed with my laptop). Works fine. The TV does youtube, netflix, amazon video, iplayer etc already. This is a 3 year old Bravia EX unit worth about £100 now.

I take it to hotel ls when i travel. Its tiny, Combined with my phone as a wifi i stream to the hotel tv with a tablet or laptop. easy small portable.

For me it's the convenience of being able to throw up various content from every device in the house (either via a dedicated app, or via chrome). It doesn't replace xbmc in any but when you want to e.g. play a youtube video, it's fantastically convenient for the low price.

xbmc is terrible on a Raspberri Pi, it's way too slow.

It's greatly improved with XBMC 13.0+, which included a bunch of optimizations to make XBMC on the RPi more bearable. Go through the XBMC Raspberry Pi wiki page to turn off things that waste CPU (like the RSS ticker). It also helps to use rpi-config and select the modest overclocking option (the one that doesn't change any voltages). XBMC is very smooth after doing those things.

The only issue I still have is that the wifi dongle I attached to the RPi can only pull 10Mb/s. I hear this is due to lack of power provided by the RPi to its USB ports and that it can be mitigated by using a powered USB hub, but I haven't tried that yet. 10Mb/s is enough to stream SD and some HD, but not all HD. I've tweaked the buffering settings to make this a little more bearable but honestly I usually end up transcoding a lower-bitrate version for the RPi to stream, which is a pain without a UPnP server to do that transparently.

A USB install of Openelec on a Raspberry Pi overclocked to 'Super' (1000..) works well. Not as good as a more powerful system, but as far as the pi goes this is the fastest option.

Just wondering, what distro are you using? Did you set up XBMC on Raspbian yourself or are you using something pre-packaged like OpenELEC or Raspbmc?

I set it up on Raspbian, but I used the binary packages provided by [Michael Gorven](http://michael.gorven.za.net/raspberrypi/xbmc) instead of compiling from source as described by the Raspbian wiki.

One special use is live streaming your screen from your phone or computer to the chrome cast.