Good Sunday morning folks. Today I talked about and showed the much awaited (well, for tech lovers anyway) Google Chromecast, which became available in Canada last week among other European countries.
It’s the latest gizmo for watching movies, videos, pictures and listening to music from your smartphone on any HDTV screen in your home with no wires.
Belonging to the same category of the small Roku media box and Apple TV, its cheaper and device agnostic and can be set up at any home, even taken with you.
It’s cheapest at $39, available at Google Play or amazon.ca. Its idea is simple. It plugs into a free HDMI port on your TV and communicates wirelessly between your home WiFi and your Android smartphone, or tablet, iPhone or iPad, mac laptop and Windows laptop.
The thumb size device needs to be powered all the time through the included USB wall charger or if your TV likely has it, a USB port.
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Once you follow the simple onscreen TV guide and download the appropriate app on your device, you can run YouTube, Google Play Movies, Netflix, Songza and VEVO to the big screen TV using your device as the controller. Not all apps on your phone can run Chromecast, but according to Google, more than 3,000 developers signed up to contribute more media experience on Chromecast.
For example, visualize a word game with several players using their phones signed in to Chromecast in the same room on one TV screen. They could be playing a word game, each with their own unique screen. Clever.
And unlike any streaming competitor, Chromecast lets you catch up on your email and more on you smartphone at the same time.
The image quality is impressive and adjusts to the speed of your wireless connection. I was able to enjoy Full HD-like quality using Netflix. Running free streaming music on Songza over my better quality TV speaker system, from my phone, was a cool experience.
But one thing to point out -you get no more or less to Chromecast to your TV than your phone has now. If you don’t pay for a full movie capable streaming service like Netflix, the experience won’t match the high graphics media selections you get from, in my case, Shaw, Telus TV subscription or additional streaming content provided by your paid cellphone subscription.
Still, being able to integrate a quality wireless experience with popular phones on any HDTV screen at home is a worthwhile endeavor with huge potential.
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