23 thoughts on “It was a dongle. Now it’s a pendant.”

  1. I unloaded my Chromecast about two weeks ago. And there’s not enough here for me to consider replacing it. Dual band wireless, including 802.11ac, and I assume slightly improved specs to support “FastPlay.” Screen mirroring is pretty killer for such an inexpensive accessory (still $35), but I don’t have a regular need.

  2. FireTV stick is the same price and has a real remote. It works as a remote player for youtube, netflix, hulu+, etc, too, and supports amazon video to boot. Never understood why anyone would prefer a chromecast to a firetv stick.

  3. Well, it’s $5 more when not on sale… But, yeah, I’d much prefer a full-on platform with remote. Even though I had issues with the Fire TV Stick.

  4. I am not excited about the Chromecast 2, but I AM excited about the Chromecast Audio, aka Sonos for a fraction of the price. I will wait to see how well it works, but that could finally bring our house into the 2010s with true multi-room streaming audio. Then I can retire the Sony S-Air system. :-)

  5. Chucky, good point if just using a single speaker. But the multi-room capabilities, and the ability to make any speaker system (e.g. your old Stereo-CD-cassette combo box) into a streaming music player is kind of compelling. To me. Maybe a few other people.

  6. “I’ll send you 80% of the revenue I generated with that tweet, thanks.”

    Hallelujah! Gassing up the yacht and paying for it via the verifiable credit history accessible by your comment. Been in dry dock too long. Thanks for the hydrocarbons.

    Now if I only had some way of playing audio on the long sea voyages, I’d really be set. Instead, with no viable options, I guess we’ll just have to sing

    (Sloop John B is really kinda a dark song, if you ever listen to it. But that Brian Wilson sure seemed happy. I’m confused.)

  7. I’m still using my original Chromecast and don’t see anything to upgrade for since I have no wi-fi issues with it and most of the updates are in the software and should work fine with the original one.
    If it broke or something though I’d replace it in a heartbeat for $35. Well worth it for nothing more than the rare occasion when I want to stream something from a tab which doesn’t seem available to me to stream elsewhere. That it and it makes a great photo frame actually. Well, it used to and now will again since Google Photos and other services will be available.
    Chromecast Audio is definite for me. Only question is how many I’ll buy.

  8. We use our chromecasts as plex end points. We have one FireTV stick which the kids use to stream their children shows from Amazon Prime. I would really like google to improve the backdrop function of the chromecasts. It works but is a bit cumbersome right now. The updates to the chromecast app look interesting.

  9. I use my chromecast pretty regularly. I have two specific use cases:

    1) As a front end for the slingbox that I have at my mom’s house. Much better slingplayer app than firetv stick

    2) I run a home poker tournament on my laptop and we have tables in two rooms. The chromecast allows me to share the tournament screen on a tv in the 2nd room.

    I’ve purchased the new one because I am hopeful that the wifi reception will be better than on the first one. Also I’m a little i intrigued by the idea of duel screen gaming using my phone as the controller an the TV as the game screen.

    I’ve never really gotten into using it for netflix or other OTT type services. Those work just fine on my Tivos. But for the very specific use cases above, I haven’t found anything that works as well as the chromecast.

  10. I just setup my new Chromecast this evening. I was surprised it arrived form Google so quickly. I actually like the new form factor better. Especially the magnet that hold the HDMI cable. I’ll probably pick up a couple more later this year to replace my other, gen 1, Chromecasts. Hopefully they will be on sale for around $25 at some point.

  11. That’s awesome. I got my Chromecast Audio today as well. Google Play store delivered fast!

    I am liking the Audio so far. Can’t wait for multi-room.

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