ChromeCast - What Good Is It? 5

Posted by JD 01/06/2014 at 14:00

Got a Google Chromecast for Xmas. Played with it for about 2 hrs, then unplugged it. Seems the things I wanted to use it for … youtube streaming … isn’t supported.

Update Feb 2014: In the last few days, the Chromecast has become useful to some level here. It is still mainly useful to people with Netflix and HuluPlus Paid subscriptions, but there is hope.

Let me explain.

What Did I Expect and Try?

Doesn’t play any of my local xvid/avi content or much of what I want to watch on youtube. Actually, couldn’t figure out how to play any of my local content without some other tool being installed.

Wanted to watch some full 2012 Olympic events from youtube. None will play. This video is not available on your TV Huh? Tried a few other youtube videos … a few played, but most did not. This video is not available on your TV was returned. Huh? This shocked me completely.

It refuses to stream local music or video from android devices. Huh? Seems all the content must be in “the cloud” at specific providers, not local on the same LAN. Even local MP3 music files are not supported.

Tried to stream videos from XBMC and Windows7 Media Center – failed. It sees these devices, but cannot find any content to stream on the LAN. This might be a personal issue. I’ve never had much luck with 7MC DLNA servers. Always 3 months out of date.

Tried to connect to local LAN storage using CIFS. Failed. It doesn’t do this. Seems only Plex might be able to do this. I do not have a Plex server currently.

Doesn’t connect to Amazon Prime Streaming.

Doesn’t connect to normal Hulu.com Streaming.

Who Can Use a Chromecast?

So, the only people that this device seems useful for are:

  1. people willing to run Chrome on a PC (enjoy being google-tracked); Chromium is not good enough.
  2. people with Netflix accounts
  3. people with HuluPlus accounts – free Hulu DOES NOT WORK.
  4. people running some local server that this device understands. Plex?
  5. people with 2.4Ghz wifi, not 5Ghz

Basically, it is easier to say what it CAN do and assume everything else does NOT work.

My Expectations

I knew it didn’t do some of these things, but I honestly expected streaming anything on youtube to work.
I expected to stream video and audio from my android devices too.

The only thing that was a nice surprise? From Android, the chromecast addon sees our Roku on the network and has the equivalent of Play To. That is unexpected. The Roku is basically an Amazon Prime Player here. Not used for anything else since XBMC is setup and much nicer to use with TVs. The Youtube on Roku doesn’t play the Olympics either. Returns Live videos are not supported on Roku Streaming Player. Bummer.

Update Feb 2014

This week, I deployed a Plex media server on the network. When combined with a newly released Android app, BubbleUPnP, the Chromecast is able to be a DLNA Renderer device for my local media library with some caveats. New content is encoded to h.264 video, which is supported in both MP4 and MKV containers by the Chromecast, however, normally I just copy the AC3 audio into the MKV container, which is NOT supported by the Chromecast. Using a simple ffmpeg/avconv script, transcoding the files to MP3 audio allows them to play on the Chromecast. I need to get that working on the Plex Server to be happy. A trivial script:

#!/bin/bash
CHAN=2
BITRATE="160k"
IN="$1"
OUT="$IN.mkv"
ffmpeg -i "$IN" -vcodec copy -acodec libmp3lame -ac $CHAN -ab $BITRATE "$OUT"

  1. Tyler 01/06/2014 at 21:15

    Can it not be used as a typical UPnP renderer?

    Like here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neLkKbfl42E

  2. Icy 01/07/2014 at 04:56

    I think the youtube videos you were trying to play were special in that the authors chose to restrict the types of medium their content can be played on, likely for ad revenue?

  3. JD 01/07/2014 at 13:29

    That demo is misleading. Most of the content is streamed from cloud servers.

    I installed the BubbleUPnP app and it saw 2 devices, but never any media on those devices. Also, it didn’t see the Chromecast on the network at all. Of course, there is a paid app.

    I’ve never had luck with DLNA working well here. The media shown of the DLNA servers was always months out of date – usually the TV recordings were deleted long ago and the newer recordings were not in the list. Never have that issue with either NFS or CIFS mounts.

  4. JD 01/07/2014 at 14:43

    @Icy – thanks for the reply.
    I’m very willing to see ads in youtube, but I expect Google/Youtube to playback perfectly on any Google-device. Android, Chromecast – goog-whatever. Poor marketing, IMHO.

    I’d love it if someone was able to show something useful for using a Chromecast that I’ve missed. At this point, it is a $35 waste of money to me.

    BTW, I really, really, dislike that it doesn’t have wired ethernet. I need to take it to the family room on the far side of our compound and test the streaming from there. A roku3 worked … er … mostly good from there with just a few stutters every hour of video. The roku has been moved into my home-office and gets used a bunch there for AMZ-Streaming.

    Don’t recall if I bitched about this, but the fact that the video-out for the Chromecast is always-on makes my auto-switch-HDMI device crazy. Now have 2 always-on HDMI devices, so audo-switching doesn’t work.

    I know, I know … my life is terrible – NOT!

  5. JD 01/07/2014 at 18:53

    Chromecast in Family Room

    So, took the device to the family room on the opposite side of the house. Connected it to a TV there, the USB power from the TV actually was enough this time. That was new. Powered right up, connected to the network and was available.

    Streamed only youtube .. mostly Nat Geo stuff. My phone, a stock Nexus 4, non-rooted, locked up the youtube app at least 20 times. Left a show playing on the TV and switched away on youtube on the phone – couldn’t figure out how to get back to the same video to control it – pause? This was the 1st time that I’ve felt stuck at the TV in my house since 2006. Had a TiVo or DVR since then. Need to find a Chromecast Remote app.

    The streaming did work well. No stutters on the TV, but streaming on the phone (same wifi network, same time) failed more than once. It dropped the network, locked up over and over. Guess that says more about the phone than the Chromecast.

    At 1 point, the same video just being watched on the CC/TV refused to play on the CC again. Casting wasn’t an option in the app anymore. Never figured that out – killed youtube and the chromecast app – restarted and ended up picking a different video to watch.

    WDTV Live HD

    There is a WDTV Live HD connected to the same TV as the chomecast. Sadly, wifi streaming to it never works well. This is NOT the WDTV Live Plus (with Netflix), but the older WDTV Live HD. It plays locally attached and wired ethernet connected 1080p videos PERFECTLY. Wifi playback, even in the same room with the wifi-router never had the throughput needed. Wifi streaming just needs huge buffers, I guess. For online streaming of youtube, the Chromecast DOES work better than the WDTV.