We’re ending production of Chromecast

I have had two Chromecasts (the original and an Ultra) and I feel like both were hampered by the phone requirement. Part of this is my house having kids without phone who would have liked to have access to Netflix, and part is due to my Apple TV use, which I use far more often.

I'm sure there will be some loss of functionality here, but hopefully it's with the benefit of a much better user experience.

The replacement ("Google TV streamer") seems to be a quite different device – most importantly, one that will be very visible next to a TV, and not out of sight behind it like its predecessor.

For anyone not particularly interested in having "AI" in their streaming stick (and this being Google, surely that will just happen in the cloud...?), I'm not sure if that's an improvement.

I finally replaced it about a month ago with an onn streaming box from Walmart for about 20 bucks--less than I paid for the original Chromecast a decade ago:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/onn-Google-TV-4K-Streaming-Box-Ne...

Works great, and still has Chromecast support. Most of the stuff I used to cast can be handled by Google TV having equivalent Android apps now, but I still like casting my local music from my phone to the TV when I'm reading. There's a $50 4K version out now, as well, if you have a higher resolution TV, but the TV I had the Chromecast plugged into caps out at 1080P, so, no need.

Google TV and this new device displays advertisements, store, and more. I hate it.

It's the last google thing in my house. When it dies, google will be gone from my house.

Not that much of a shock here, the market moved on from simple wireless display dongles.

Unfortunately no sign of Google Cast protocol being opened for general purpose use. Would be great to be able to run your own custom Receiver-device without needing a Google certificate...

Products would be preferred suggestions, but I'm even at the point of considering DIY solutions, if something looks lego-ish enough!

I feel like nobody running product at google has any idea what they're doing.

Real shame, I prefer controlling with my phone more than the shitty smart tv interfaces. Don’t even get me started with controlling said interfaces with my phone, it’s not as simple.

I use a tv from 2010 , Chromecast is the retrofit that lets me do modern streaming. Of course we’re far past the transitional stage the device served as every $100 tv is equipped with streaming.

I have to say, I don't really see this product strategy as being good, or working. Google's product is just a mess, they are nearing Microsoft levels of incoherence. When you compare Google with Apple, it's such a night and day experience.

"no changes to our support policy" links to https://safety.google/nest/

It bothers me when these company blogs link to the wrong page for finding the aforementioned policy. It feels so deceptive. I've seen it happen multiple times. Is it intentional?

The old Chromecast experience -- choose media on phone, play on TV -- is all I ever wanted. I hate using a remote to browse -- my phone is much better. I hate having my TV logged into an account -- my family, kids, guests all use the same TV and I don't want them using my account, nor do I want to see their account when I'm using it.

The Chromecast protocol is the only thing that the entire ecosystem of Android streaming apps integrates nicely with. I wish Google would open it up to third parties to create Chromecast-replacement devices... but of course they won't. They aren't doing what's best for users, they are doing what's best for their engagement metrics and revenue. And thus, our experience actually gets worse.

Chromecast is core to how my family’s television usage works. I got a free Chromecast recently and it’s a much worse UX than the ones I got many years ago.

What I wish for is for the ubiquitous Cast button found everywhere to be open and neutral and for there to be a whole market of devices that’ll work. It feels frustrating and kind of ugly that there’s an Apple version and a Google version, etc.

Oh, so they're just rebranding and not making it a dongle anymore....

I didn’t use the Chromecast ultra much but I thought it was pretty neat. Kinda sad to see it go.

Honestly the Google Stadia controller is probably the most comfortable and well designed controller I’ve used. I still have it and use it for PC gaming stuff. I don’t play video games much anymore so I don’t know if the other controllers nowadays are better but that was my experience.

The point I’m trying to make is that it seems Google has talented engineers and designers. So I wonder why so many of its products fail and why it cancels so many things…

https://blog.google/products/google-nest/google-tv-streamer/

This line in particular puts a bad test in my mouth, because my $2k LG G2 OLED has the worst support for casting I've ever experienced. In fact the software in general is so bad I was excited to pre-order the new Google TV Streamer this morning, so I don't have to deal with it again.

Hopefully they'll try to reach back that low-end market in some way.

Spend way too much on the chromecasts and home devices. I guess they will continue to work for a few years, hopefully.

After this, no more google devices for me.

I would argue that this still holds true today. Is there any reliable way to do the screen mirroring/photo sharing from an Android phone to a Samsung smart TV without additional devices? My Pixel works great with Chromecast or a similar dongle(e.g. Xiaomi Box) but I really couldn't make it work without them. I tried a couple of options from plain Android sharing, through Samsung's SmartThings, to some sketchy apps that ask for your CC for trial but none of them worked before I gave up and asked my host for a HDMI cable.

Nvidia Shield and Onn still have better value for their niches.

But "Google TV Streamer"? No, I don't want that. I just want a relatively dumb device that allows me to stream stuff from my other devices to my TV. Chromecast has always been that, and has always worked fairly well. I don't need or want yet another media center platform.

Controller support would have been a selling point of the existing line of affordable devices.

Hopefully this is not the case with the $20 Onn Android TV device with USB ports FWIU instead of another $100*n TVs for updates through when now?

Still, from what I can see, it's the best device available barring Apple TV.

I've been searching around, but ready made there isn't anything that's better (on paper) and the DIY route, the only alternative I can see is LineageOS in the Banana PI. [1] AFAIK, that's not great because it doesn't have hardware acceleration, which for a device to do heavy media consumption in a 4K TV, is not an option.

I would be really happy to know about some better alternatives.

[1] https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/m5/

https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/1023...

So, pretty typical product/marketing shitshow from Google, unfortunately.

I have one and I've never used the 'cast' feature. I only run the apps for the streaming services i watch plus VLC.

Somehow I think this will be impossible in the new and improved version...

It seems like this helps with initial adoption of the product (backed by Google!) but erodes trust in the brand every time they axe a cult-favorite ("why would I invest time in ${x} when they'll probably just kill it off in a couple of years anyway..?")

Would it be better if Google launched these products subsidiaries without (obvious) links to Google?

Total Arm-Chair QB exercise, but one I feel might be interesting to get feedback on...

Expensive and quality speakers that are basically bricks at this point.

I'm hoping this hardware is faster. The previous model was very laggy compared to the Apple TV or Nvidia Shield. But probably not. It just looks like the Chromecast team is tyring to shoehorn in AI features because it's 2024. I guess the description summaries could be helpful, maybe.

We used it every evening for years and 19/20 times it streams effortlessly and instantly... 1/20 times I'm restarting browsers, TV's, WiFi until we give up and watch on a laptop.

Back to the HDMI cable. In retrospect, I should have never left it.

I honestly don't see the point on upgrading or even buying over prev. version

Yes, video streaming can be done easily nowadays. But finding a multi-room audio solution that works across different brands and also on offline devices was my main reason for getting into chromcast.

I never bought the newer Chromecast and its just been sitting idle, hopeless dangling off of an HDMI port since. My world has moved on as literally everything else can get shows displaying on a TV including the TV.

I guess it was coming.

Example use-case: I was recently in a hotel, travelling just with my phone. The hotel TV supported Chromecast, and I was able to connect my phone and watch some movies from Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and YouTube apps. This was super convenient.

who pressured Google to do this? or did they "pressure themselves" to do it?

the BEST feature of early Chromecasts was the ability to cast any video from any page. it was revelatory!

and then that feature was silently removed.

Yeah, that's right. I showed up here to mention I'm still bitter over Google Reader.

No, I'm NOT "getting over it" (contrary to the cease and desist letter I got from Google recently).

Then, the rebranding is only because they've abandoned the original "minimal footprint" ethos of ChromeCast.

> Today, we’re introducing Google TV Streamer, a more premium device built for the new era of entertainment and smart home needs.

> , bringing its best features to our next-generation 4K TV streaming device — but as a faster, more premium version.

Your home, controlled by Google. What could possibly go wrong?

Also this is the first product they killed that I agree with.

It annoying no longer is behind the TV, just copying Apple (an irritating but effective marketing ploy).

> And thanks to Gemini technology on Google TV, you can now get full summaries, reviews and season-by-season breakdowns of content, so finding your next marathon-watch just got easier.

They know it needs to be "AI powered" but they can't figure out anything that actually needs modern AI, so it's relegated to doing ordinary internet searches.

It's interesting, though, because there are existing sources for this content, like IMDB and wikipedia.

I wonder if the real point is more about selling ads while avoiding having to cut a deal with those existing sources. An LLM can essentially "launder" content so that, in general, it's hard to determine the sources for any given response. (There are plenty of individual examples where you can tell exactly what the primary source was, but those are the exception.)

I suspect the quality of the LLM-generated content will be worse than existing sources, but since the real point is to avoid sharing ad revenue, not providing good content to the user, that will probably be fine. It content doesn't need to be good, just good enough.

Welcome to the AI future! It's a lot grubbier than I expected.

Chromecast

Chromecast Ultra

Chromecast with Google TV

Google TV

YouTube TV

YouTube Premium

YouTube Music

YouTube Red

etc.

Can you see my surprised face? Me, too, neither.

Google is a serial murderer of its own parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

There is no product too small, or large, for Google to murder.

It is beyond my ken why any person, organization, company, or government would do business with Google or use Google's products.

You're just biding time for Google to murder your profits.

does this mean airplay will be the only game in town from now on, that is, to cast your audio or screen from your phone to smart speaker or TVs.

1. Sometimes it took 2-3 minutes to wakeup from the sleep state.

2. The remote is so curved on the bottom (literally a semi-circle) that I struggled to pick it up and the only ways to reliably pick it up successfully resulted in inadvertent button presses

3. The remote is overly minimalist. 8 buttons total. Missing buttons include a play/pause button, which is easily the most vital button for a device dedicated to playing media. Sometimes the center button acts as play pause but other times not. It has taken me 30s to pause what I'm watching when I'm already holding the remote (add in #2 and it can take me over a minute to pause)

4. Sometimes media playback just crashes and I need to start over.

5. Tons of ads. I was expecting this from a Google product, but thought I'd mention it anyways

TL;DR: If you want a STB, just pay the extra $20 for a Roku, everything about it works absurdly better. If the Roku cost $100 more, I'd still recommend it for anyone not on the most extreme of budgets.

Assuming a TV consumes 70 Watts, why would they want to encourage using it as a picture frame? Either they care about the environment or they don't.

On the other side, Chromecast is something that's been essential in my family's home for years, so it's worrisome what alternatives my, for example, mother will have.

what are some good alternatives to Chromecast? (can cast from phone or desktop browser)

The worst thing about modern TVs are all their smart shit. I just want a monitor, no speakers, no nothing, just HDMI input and a large, good image, it's what it should do. Sound should come from the stereo system. Input should come from input devices, such as chromecast and gaming consoles.

I hate this future.

Chromecast is a great device to have with you on the road. Now it's this massive brick?. Why would I want this?

It's just another reason to not get invested in anything Google related. Whatever you do you'll always end up with a discontinued product or a brick in the end.

That's it. I'm NEVER buying another google device again.

It was exactly what I want in a device: Do one thing and do it well.

I decided to replace it with a new "Chromecast" device to find out that it bears next to no resemblance to the original. Today's Chromecasts are just wannabe Roku devices with actual casting being relegated to the status of unwanted stepchild. It forces you to sign in to a Google account, which the original did not force you to do. The original was a small stick that could be powered by the USB coming from the TV itself, whereas the new one is a larger white puck that needs a wall wort and can't be powered by a regular (non-C) USB connection. My final disappointment was that VLC fails to cast to it, even though it worked perfectly with the original.

All I want is a way to cast any video I want to my TV. This is apparently a huge ask in 2024. I looked up alternative devices on Amazon and they all seem inferior or have deal breakers like trying to Do Everything(TM), not supporting 4K, using some weird protocol, requiring a login, etc.

Seems to be a reason to charge people more for the same thing but slap the AI label all over it. But that's just first impressions.

Edit: and apparently the TV Streamer thing is twice the price of the Chromecast.

Honestly, I'm not sure which company frustrates me more right now. Updating apps on Google Play has become a nightmare compared to Apple, where review times can stretch to two weeks (sic). Plus, the google search is practically useless.