Chromecast - First Thoughts

So, yesterday I got my hands on the UK version of Google Chromecast, on the morning of its launch day.

I couldn't sit down and play with it until the evening, but the nice lady in Currys/PC World informed me that I was the first person to get one from the store that day - from what was quite a small concession area plopped right in the middle of the store - a retail Big Bang, this was not!

In the evening, I was able to sit down and get the device working. So first a bit on the unboxing experience...

The small box which Chromecast comes in is pleasant enough - seemingly from the Apple school of neat, minimal design. The hardware itself is a diminutive little black 'key' - with a HDMI port at one end, and Micro USB at the other (for power). Also included is a USB to Micro USB cable, UK plug adapter, and HDMI extension. Chaining them all in series, you then have something like looks like this:

Chromecast assembled

I'd argue that's not a lot like the standard image of Chromecast, but does it matter if it's hidden away behind the TV? Probably not.

Regarding setup, I would like to say it went as simply as an Apple product (Apple in my view being the gold standard in setup simplicity), but unfortunately it didn't. On plugging in and powering up, your TV screen displays a message directing you to go to chromecast.com/setup in whichever device browser you have to hand. I was using an iPhone, so I was taken to a page with a link to download the chromecast app. No problem.

On starting up the Chromecast app for iPhone, I was told to go to the wireless network settings on the iPhone and connect to whichever wireless network ID the chromecast was showing on the TV screen - in essence, the Chromecast was acting as a wireless access point, so that the iPhone could connect to it and do initial setup - which was basically going to consist of giving the Chromecast my home network settings, so that it could hop on and see the internet.

This is where things went a little off-track - despite following the instructions to the letter, at the point where the Chromecast had to stop being a wireless access point, and join my home network as a client, it got stuck - and then the iPhone App reported not being able to see the Chromecast!

I attached my iPhone to the home network to see if the Setup App could see the Chromecast, but alas no joy. The message on my TV screen also informed me that the Chromecast was 'joining' the home network, and it stayed like his for some minutes.

In the end, I followed the whole setup process through twice before I managed to get Chromecast on to my home network - it then decided it was going to do a software update, which took it out of action for another few minutes including the obligatory reboot...

Anyway, with all the setup faff out of the way, the Chromecast App on the iPhone directed me to a catalogue page where I could download Chromecast-enabled Apps - and this is probably the point where it might be less clear to people that aren't familiar with Chromecast: unlike all other streaming sticks/devices, it doesn't have a TV UI - the stick is just there to playback whatever you throw at it, and so the TV screen will default to a screensaver if you're not playing videos.

This leads to one other crucial point: the chromecast usefulness is entirely at the mercy of apps that are enabled for casting - right now there's a small but reasonable selection (for iPhone), including:

• YouTube
• Vevo
• Netflix
• BBC iPlayer
• Red Bull TV
• Google Play Music
• Plex
• Realplayer Cloud

The YouTube and Vevo Apps on iPhone are quite interesting, because they already contain the ability to Airplay - an experience that in some ways isn't that different to Chromecast. The main difference, is that Airplay operates from (typically) iOS device to Apple TV over a local network - so you stream your music video from your iPhone App to Apple TV for example. Chromecast is different - your Chromecast enabled App (on iPhone in this case) has a casting button, which when pressed, gives the URL of the video you want to watch to the Chromecast, at which point the Chromecast gets the video directly from the web.

Back to the iPhone apps for YouTube and Vevo then - I was keen to see the video quality delivered by the Chromecast, and I must have picked a bad example video on YouTube,  because quality was not great....but to my relief the next video quality was excellent! Subsequent videos also gave nice quality through YouTube. Vevo (a service that lets you watch the latest music videos in exchange for sitting through occasional Ads/promos), also provided nice quality.

Next I moved on to Red Bull TV, iPlayer, and Netflix. Red Bull TV was cool (watched some nice FMX on there), and as mature players in Video Apps space, BBC iPlayer and Netflix quality were both very good.

And really that's it - you choose the stuff you want to watch or listen to, and it appears on screen. For now, for me, it's a slightly limiting experience, but if more Apps are added, then it could become quite interesting.

Google have released an SDK, which no doubt will accelerate the Appa that are built, and not to forget that casting from an Android device might also give you other flexibility in what you can watch. Additional options exist to cast from your Chrome browser, but I'll possibly cover that experience in another post.

Google Chromecast costs £30 in the UK, and you can buy it from retail stores such as Currys/PC World, and online from the likes of Amazon, and of course the Google Store.