I fear the release the this new Nexus Player portends we're not going to see an update to the Chromecast anytime soon, if ever. That makes me sad.
I guess I'm just not the average user, but the Chromecast handily beats what this (and other options in this genre, i.e., Apple TV / Fire TV / Roku) have to offer. I don't want another remote control. And making my phone the best remote control is an awesome solution. And the Chromecast doesn't take up any room in my living room / entertainment center. And it's only thrity-five-goddamn-dollars.
I guess the downside is that I can't play crappy games on my big screen. Darn.
From what I heard, Chromecast and Google TV come from 2 completely different teams.
It is possible that Google will want to focus on only one of these 2, but it is also possible that they will push both ideas at least for some time.
I think Google stumbled on a very great idea with Chromecast. I don't want a smart TV with tons of features and a shitty interface that I have to navigate through with an awkward pad.
I want an extremely dumb TV that only displays what my other terminals (laptop, tablet and phone) tell it to display.
My girlfriend and I have two TVs (bedroom and living room) in the house, each with a chromecast hooked up. I have a media center computer running plex in the living room. We use my original Nexus 7 tablet as our "remote".
NO REMOTE IN THE WORLD will ever beat an app on a tablet or phone. I can search and browse so easily on my tablet to find what I want. I can start a video and then explore other stuff. It's the perfect setup.
If only I could pay the NFL for a streaming-only HD football package, I would have literally everything I need for consuming video. But I don't think that will ever happen (at least without having to get a cable/satellite subscription which I refuse to ever do again).
How are you able to get NFL games without a cable / satellite subscription? Or did you just give up on the NFL? I am in a similar situation with sports being the only thing keeping my cable subscription active.
I can't get them (legally) like I said in my OP. I usually stream games not on locally to my computer and tabcast to my TV with chromecast but the quality is mega-shitty. We also have an HD antenna in the living room which gets us NBC, Fox, CBS, and ABC just fine so that covers a couple of the games every weekend.
The little exclusivity pact the NFL and the major Cable companies have makes me have zero qualms about just straight stealing the content. If they have me a legitimate way to pay for every Packers game (directly through the NFL, not a cable provider) I would do it in a heartbeat, but they haven't, so screw 'em.
Apparently there's a way to signup and pay for NFL game pass using a VPN and pretending to be in Europe but I won't do that on sheer principle. It's insane to me I could legally pay for NFL outside of the US but inside the US I have to go through a third party (cable company) to get streaming access.
There is a streaming service called NFL Rewind that you can get for ~$40 per year. The drawback is that all games are blacked out until after SNF is over. So I live in a bubble and ignore football until I can watch my team play at 9pm Pacific.
There is also a service called NFL GamePass which lets you watch games live if you live outside the North American market. I think the geographic restriction can be gotten around using VPNs & other geo-location defeating measures, but I've never tried.
The games for both NFL Rewind & GamePass are streamed via their website, and there is an official Android app, as well as a Plex app, and an XBMC plugin. The quality is not great, but it is better than nothing.
Give up on telling people on the internet how best to relax and which hobbies they should have and utilise that time (and karma from not being a jerk to strangers) for something productive, you won't regret it.
Question: Do you literally spend all of your time on "productive" things? You never watch a movie or tv show, you don't go to a concert or read a comic? You don't listen to a record or play a video game?
I'm pretty sure I'd regret giving those things up.
We live in a sea of available entertainment and sources of amusement. Why be so attached to one particular form of entertainment when the cartel that controls it doesn't make it easy or inexpensive to consume?
@touchmuchtodo, unfortunately you cannot stream digital antenna content to a Chromecast directly. I would assume it would need a digital signal converter, at the very least. I've been considering getting a TV tuner card for my desktop explicitly for streaming live games to my Chromecasts.
(I couldn't seem to reply to you directly for whatever reason)
Not all my time, but as much as I can bear. Everyone needs to relax and enjoy themselves. I do watch movies and tv shows, but I generally try to choose forms of entertainment that have some educational value (even if it's social commentary, such as in the Simpsons and South Park). Between Netflix and Amazon Prime (and Vimeo and Crackle and all the other options) there is no need to go to see a movie in the theater. I do not go to concerts any more, there are free ones available on YouTube. I read free webcomics like Dilbert and XKCD. I buy PC games during Steam sales. Some forms of entertainment are egregiously expensive in my opinion. That level of inefficiency deserves criticism.
We've already cut the cable, saving us about $1000/year. I played football for more than half my life and love watching it, and am willing to pay for high quality access to it, but I refuse to jump through hoops to do so.
It's not a technical limitation by the cable companies/NFL, it's literally just bureaucratic bullshit.
Depending on where you live you can indeed get a streaming only package from the NFL. NFL Sunday Ticket has a streaming only option for locales where DirectTV isn't necessarily an option. I live in Philly and can get it even though DirectTV is technically in my neighborhood
"Now you can stream live, out-of-market NFL games on your favorite device without a DIRECTV satellite TV subscription if you live in a select apartment building, attend one of these universities, or live in the following metro areas: New York City, Philadelphia, or San Francisco."
Amazingly enough, living smack dab in the middle of a massive city (San Diego), I can't get this offer. The NFL and the cable/satellite companies are practically begging me to steal their content when they come out with stupid shit like this.
If this were a national offering, I'd get it in a heartbeat. Why it's not a national offering I have no idea.
> Phone batteries get low every day. Having to walk to where your phone is charging to change the channel is a bad experience.
I have solved the fairly rare occurrence of my phone dying when I want to watch a movie by having a charger next to my coffee table. I mean, maybe we just have different experiences, but has this actually happened to you? Regularly? Does it take up more or less time than hunting down a lost remote control?
> Using the phone as a remote is anti-social. I can't pick out what to watch with the person who's sitting in the chair across the room.
You'll have to instead talk to them, or have them sit closer and look over your shoulder. Not more or less social, just a different type of social. And add to that, the ability to have multiple people use their individual devices to queue videos is an excellent social experience
@Touche: Okey doke. We just have had different experiences. Remotes get misplaced, but my phone is in my pocket. I've never had a conversation like that with friends when we're deciding what to watch. We're both looking at our phones, searching and exploring content our own way. No one says "third row down, second movie," they say, "How about Frozen?"
> I have solved the fairly rare occurrence of my phone dying when I want to watch a movie my having a chargee next to my coffee table. I mean, maybe we just have different experiences, but has this actually happened to you? Regularly?
I have a charger next to my coffee table too, but then I have to sit in the seat next to the coffee table every time. And I have to reach over to use the phone because the charger cord isn't very long.
> Does it take up more or less time than hunting down a lost remote control?
Far less time. The remote isn't an object that gets moved around. It spends most of it's lifetime in a single room. If you lose it there's a 90% chance it's in the couch cushions.
> You'll have to instead talk to them, or have them sit closer and look over your shoulder. Not more or less social, just a different type of social. And add to that, the ability to have multiple people use their individual devices to queue videos is an excellent social experience
Multiple people staring at their own screens looking at different things is not social.
A: "Oh this one looks interesting"
B: "Which one"?
A: "Third row down, second movie."
B: "The one with the snowman?"
A: "No, it's got the actors smiling"
B: "Hm, third row down, second movie? I see a snowman"
I suppose you can simply mirror your phone's screen to your TV using Chromecast while browsing for movies so everyone will see your phone's display on the big screen. But I guess it's not exactly ideal. Personally, I never search for movies using my phone. It's so much easier on my laptop.
Social is 100% in chromecast favor. I love sitting down with family and friends and just queue up a bunch of different Youtube videos or songs to play. It is hysterical, convenient and cross platform (iOS or Android). This will do everything Chromecast already does.
Somehow, "hysterical, convenient and cross platform" in this context conjures an image of a room full of people with manic grins plastered to their faces, determined to be having fun Or Else!
No, its not, any more than using a regular remote as a remote is.
> Having to walk to where your phone is charging to change the channel is a bad experience.
Yes, it is, but that's not fundamental to the Chromecast, its just bad app UI design (for instance, you don't have the same issue if you are tab casting a regular web page that provides the selection before getting to the streaming media). There's no reason that an mobile app that uses the Google Cast API can't have a similar [or even better] optimized casting UI to a dumb tab-casted web page, its just that most so far don't. Extending the line of Google Cast devices -- if it extends reach -- may indirectly improve this, by getting app developers to spend more effort on the UX of their Cast support.
I was an enthusiastic early adopter of Chromecast. I hated it, and now use a Roku. I share my television with my girlfriend, I don't want to have to set up Netflix, Amazon, Hulu etc. on both our phones and have us manually 'cast' to the screen.
The Roku is so much better. Everything is centralised, and the remote is a better interface than a phone screen. So I'm excited for the Nexus Player, as I want my Roku to be more hackable than it is. A Nexus Player with XBMC will be a dream.
Wow, I'm shocked at how opposite I feel about this. I already had Netflix setup on my phone so casting is no problem (I didn't realize Amazon already works to cast, I guess I'll set that up tonight).
I definitely find the phone/tablet much more comfortable for searching content and flinging it to the TV. Typing to search for a specific show on Netflix on my TV is a huge pain to me.
When I'm by myself browsing by phone is fine. But when we're discussing what Movie to watch I'd have to read what I'm looking at to her, etc. etc. - the two of you looking at the same screen is 1000% better.
And casting through Netflix was painful in itself. So slow. But maybe that was just my phone/setup somehow.
Ditto. Also unlocking your phone. Rewinding/Fast-forwarding on your phone. It's all so slow. And for me at least, it feels like there's a 50/50 chance if I seek in a video it'll just break the stream, I'll have to close the Youtube app entirely, and try again.
On the other hand when you're interested in something specific. Car reviews for example. The TV-Queue is really sweet.
But I just cast from Youtube to my Sony Bravia or Roku's. I'm not sure if that's Google Cast or not. I just discovered it by accident last week.
We cast our screens when talking about what to watch. But, I agree with you that that part of the experience is clunkier than Roku. On the flip side, the ability to stream anything is fantastic, and I think makes up for that deficiency.
Yeah, that is a lot better. But when I tried it, the casting stopped when I turned off my phone screen. Is that the case for all devices or just my weird setup?
The Nexus Player supports Google Cast which may make it the best combination of Chromecast and media box functionality.
Apps on your phone should be able to control apps on the player, and the apps on the player can be used standalone. We'll have to see if apps from the Play Store gets Google Cast control, or if this only happens for the Chromecast-style web apps.
This has the advantage that you can select content on phone and then use the phone or remote on the player to control playback.
Indeed. At $99 [1], equipped with 802.11ac [2], a far more powerful processor that is capable of playing 4K video [3], you could ignore Google TV in its entirety and probably justify your purchase just to use it as a Chromecast Deluxe.
[1]: Reported by TechCrunch. Regular Chromecast is $35.
[2]: Possibly with 5GHz band? Regular Chromecast is 2.4GHz 802.11n only.
I was really excited about the Chromecast when it was first announced. But sadly Google have really hamstrung it every step of the way.
Luckily, Mozilla is developing a very similar device (Matchstick [1]), and looking to do it better. I am unable to find the link at the moment, but they already support like 3 or 4 times as many media formats as chromecast. And Mozilla has a pretty good track record with hackable, open projects.
I don't believe Mozilla is developing it. It's an external companies product but they are using Mozilla's Firefox OS on it. I could be wrong but that's my understanding from the material presented.
I don't believe this to be the case, unless the definition of 'driven by' is different to what I understand it to be. Can you provide more information?
Chromecast is a little different from a box like this. Chromecast is about bridging the gap between the Android phone/tablet and the TV as a display. These boxes are more about directly targeting that TV environment as its own ecosystem. For some apps like Netflix this is a redundant point, but for other apps it is a key difference.
Anything that requires more than minimal computation?
Chromecast pretty much just mirrors a screen, it also requires a separate device to control it. You could browse the web on this without requiring a phone or laptop.
> Anything that requires more than minimal computation?
But, again, like what? The Chromecast is able to display pretty complex HTML and JavaScript apps. And perhaps a new updated Chromecast with more horsepower would be able to do an even better job... But give me an example of something you think the Chromecast couldn't do that you'd want it to? It can do HD video, and has a decent HTML rendering engine....
Since the Nexus Player will have Chromecast support built-in (like all Android TV devices), software will hopefully continue to add support on their end.
5GHz wifi for one. No 802.11n/802.11ac on 5GHz at all.
The airwaves are crowded where I live. There are so many networks and sources of interference that any 2.4GHz network I set up inevitably drops out constantly. I've had 3 different routers.
The solution was to move to 5GHz. Pretty much everything else in the house can run on 5GHz and stay connected to the internet that way. Chromecast can only connect to 2.4GHz networks, so I have to run one for it, but it doesn't see devices on the 5GHz network even though they're on the same LAN.
My 5GHz devices can seem my 2.4GHz Chromecasts. You don't have wireless isolation on in your router do you? Has to be a router setting. 1 access point or 2?
This is a good point... it's not missing much in terms of features and functionality.
A pie in the sky idea, that none of these devices have tried to incorporate, is to have a webcam peripheral support to enable video chatting. This is the primary thing I still use my HTPC for. Being able to gather my wfie and/or friends into the living room to video chat with friends that live elsewhere, having those friends be able to see the whole room where we're able to sit comfortably, is really a great experience. And at this point, using an HTPC for that is overkill, in terms of horsepower needed. Incorporating a feature like this into a media device would be a killer feature for me. "Casting" a Skype or Hangout video chat.... I'd be all over that.
I'm seriously considering buying a couple of Xbox ones with kinect for that reason. My parents are getting older and my sister lives overseas with a new baby. I live in another city again. The kinect Skype with fancy microphones and the ability to focus on the speaker is compelling.
WPA-Enterprise support would be good. I would like to use Chromecasts at work for screen sharing but they won't login onto network. Sounds like this is also a big issue for college networks.
Captive portal support would also help in getting on more wireless networks. Chromecast is small enough to take traveling and would be useful to plug into hotel TV. But most hotels networks have captive portals.
It wasn't ever a production device. The entire product line was constantly updating to bleeding edge, and thus hardly ever worked. Consumers shouldn't ever have had one. The real mistake was handing them out.
When casting from my phone, the phone is the remote. If I cast from my desktop I can use the remote that came with it (it was an ASUS motherboard of some flavor).
I'm looking forward to the Mozilla clone which will let me cast VLC directly to the TV. That will useful for me.
To me, they are just one more thing to keep track of and keep charged. I think connecting the remote control of things to the one device that is always around, instead of an assortment of tailor made devices, is brilliant.
What? A media-hub with NO wired ethernet? How am I supposed to take that seriously?
I don't care about what people saying about wifi having gotten "better". By every single measurable criteria, it is slower, is less reliable, has lower capacity and higher latency than wired gigabit ethernet and I doubt that will change anytime soon.
I demand wired ethernet on my devices, and I know a bunch of other who do too.
You and the bunch of other folks you know, sadly, aren't really much of a blip on the market for this. There is probably a bigger market that wishes this thing could hook up wirelessly to the tv.
> There is probably a bigger market that wishes this thing could hook up wirelessly to the tv.
Sure. We can all wish.
Back in the real world, this is the group of buyers who buys stuff like this, hook it up in a wifi-crowded area and then complain when things don't work properly.
Which is absolutely fair enough, because they're not technicians and not everyone should have to be capable of diagnosing network issues.
So why not just give these "commoners" something reliable in the first place?
I didn't even realize that it didn't have a wired hook up.
This is disappointing. I have a chromcast and it is laggy sometimes, and will simply just stop working. Hopefully the wireless card in the player is better than the chromcast.
I'm totally with you on that. Where I live the channel space is packed out with neighbouring WiFi. Even within line of sight and only 10 or so feet away I barely get more than 7-10Mbs on my Netgear N600 dual band device.
A silly price, considering their competitors cost the same, and have been in the game for much longer. Google is late and entered the market at the same price as established players, but with a track record of failure in this space (Google TV and Nexus Q).
They probably don't want to provide the information because it's embarrassing.
I'd hesitate to call any of the players in this space "established". It's still a wide open market. Of all the people I know, maybe a handful own an AppleTV, a few use a Chromecast. Other than that, there's tons of market share for the taking.
If anything, the market is oversaturated. Each brand is jumping on the bandwagon and offering nothing unique (and no, access to one proprietary media store over another is not unique). I am unfortunate enough to own more than one "cloud player". You know what this means? Media that can play in one room can't play in another. I have to choose between purchasing media from Amazon, iTunes, or Google because each company's device will exclude the others' content.
I don't understand the appeal of these devices anymore. They are so anti-consumer it's not even funny. Imagine if DVDs rented from Blockbuster would only play in Blockbuster-brand DVD players, while those from Hollywood video would only work in theirs.
In the end I settled on good old torrents and some weekly transcoding to mp4 on a powerful desktop which all of the players in my home are able to stream from, at least for now. Who knows what features future devices will gut.
You're simply not correct about all of the devices excluding each others' content. It's true for some, but take a look at the Nexus Player. Aside from Google's offering (Google Play Movies & TV), you also have Netflix and many more.
They all have netflix. I'm specifically referring to stores here. Each has its own store with its own proprietary media stream. Maybe you're right for Nexus Player, but as an owner of an Apple TV in one room and a Roku in another, there is no way for me to purchase something on either device and have it available on the other.
If I obtain on my desktop, however, it very easily streams to every device in my house.
At this price point, I don't think a lower price would do anything. If you charge $99, no one complains about the price. If you charge $79, do you really get any more buyers? If they could do box + controller for $99, maybe that would attract people, but a crummy controller would get a lot of bad attention in reviews.
If I'm comparing side-by-side or even trying to decide if I should get rid of the player I have an get this new one, being exactly the same price does make a difference. I got my first streaming player, the Roku HD, because I was in the market for an Apple TV but didn't want to pay $99 for the Apple TV.
You realize that voice search means an open mic into your living room, right? Given recent intelligence/data-gathering abuses, do you really want that?
I've played games with a PS3 controller on my Nexus 4 hooked to a big screen before. It never worked, because mobile games are designed for a touch screen. Even Modern Combat, it was fantastic with a controller right up to the point where you needed to touch the screen for a quick time event.
You can run the entire back catalog, maybe. But no one will want to until the apps and games are designed for non-touch input.
How do I find them? Like I said, I have a Nexus 4 and a controller, and I found the experience lacking. How do I find the games that can be controlled exclusively with a controller?
That was a facetious comment. The point is, everyone got excited about the Nexus Q but it was too expensive. We got excited about Google TV, but it never caught on compared to the competition. The Apple TV has been $99 since forever, as has the Roku and recently Amazon's FireTV. Google discounts their phones massively over the competition, and that's a big draw for why people buy them. Why price this exactly the same as everyone else?
I assume they don't show the price for internationalization reasons, but I do wish they had some way to see what it is in your country. Rather than just going to look at the Verge.
Sure, but it hasn't been proven that people want to develop apps for these devices, and easier app development doesn't justify a high price to consumers. At the same price point, what is there enticing a consumer to pick one of these up for Christmas?
"It does all the most basic things that the competition does, at the same (or slightly higher) price, but maybe someday there will be apps made for it" hasn't worked very well for hardly anyone throughout history. Check with Palm, Microsoft, Ouya, Blackberry, and probably dozens of others that no one remembers.
What can I say :) ? You underestimate the android market. Maybe I am just excited about this because I am an android and iOS developer and don't develop for the other devices you mentioned.
For $40 more you can get a new Xbox 360, although games might not be as cheap as on the Play store. That Xbox is just a 4GB one, but I don't see Google Player local storage mentioned in the linked page.
But if you have an Android device, you can do much more with this or a Chromecast, because both support Google Cast. XBox only has the crappy Smart Glass app (it's probably good on Windows Phone), and that's it.
Yeah but if you want to watch online stuff on your tv at this point you probably have about 6000 things that can run netflix etc, including the other google tv boxes, the amazon box, generic android boxes, the rokus, the apple tv, ps3/ps4, xbox360/xbox one, ps tv, chromecast, a hdmi cable or htpc etc.
i really like it. I use voice control for everything. at first you feel like a doofus but eventually it becomes second nature. I also plug the chromcast into the hdmi input, so i can swap and PIP all kinds of stuff (also with voice command), and the upnp (local media streaming) implementation is really good too (having frustratedly used the 360, ps3 versions for years)
My 4-year-old Google TV box (Logitech Revue) -- with Android 3.1 -- is really showing its age. The app store is pretty empty and it only supports things like Amazon Video and HBO Go because Android still had Flash back then.
The missing key is an HDMI input. My TV is always tuned to the Google TV input whether I'm watching live cable TV, a Netflix movie or casting a YouTube video. I have a single remote control (the Google TV one) for all of them. It changes channels and settings on my cable box with HDMI CEC.
All these new boxes make you switch inputs and remotes all the time. I have too many remotes already.
Speaking of HDMI CEC, I think you may like a Chromecast
>> All these new boxes make you switch inputs and remotes all the time. I have too many remotes already.
The Chromecast can turn on a TV (and the TV can turn on the audio receiver) via HDMI CEC. I was surprised when the Chromecast icon was displayed when the TV was off. Lo and behold, it just worked.
It doesn't switch inputs back when it's done, so I'd still need a phone and two remote controls to go from casting back to watching TV on my TV. Its use of CEC doesn't help solve the input/remote problem at all. The 2010 Google TV already did everything the Chromecast does except tab/screen mirroring, minus ever having to switch inputs or use multiple remotes.
I realize the controller is sold separately, but I did find it a little odd that the controller says "ASUS" at the top instead of "NEXUS" since it seems to be the official controller.
Intel is almost giving away Bay Trail-T CPUs to try and claw marketshare away from ARM-based CPUs/SoCs. As an example, Intel's advertised price for an Atom Z3735F (quad core, 1.33–1.83 GHz, 2.2 W SDP, 2 GB RAM max., Intel's Gen7 graphics) is $17, but I've read that the "real life" price dips under $10 in volume. This is an absolutely mind-boggling price for a quad-core x86-64 CPU with really quite good integrated graphics.
An exciting (to me, at least) development is that OEMs are starting to produce sub-$100 HDMI sticks with Bay Trail-T CPUs and 16 GB–32 GB of eMMC storage inside. Assuming the firmware isn't crippled, those sticks should be able to run unmodified copies of any modern x86 operating system. On Linux and FreeBSD, there is stable, functional, non-proprietary GPU support, which is a huge win over the vast majority of ARM-based systems. (Even the "OPEN hardware and software platform" Matchstick is currently chained to a binary blob because of the Mali GPU. Maybe one day the reverse engineered Mali driver will be awesome, but it's not there yet.)
Intel's earnings report supports the concept that they're not making much money on Atom. Their mobile BU this last quarter managed to turn about $1M of net revenue ... at an operating loss of about $1.04B! [1]
Watching Intel Mobile strategically over the next year or two will be very interesting indeed.
"An exciting (to me, at least) development is that OEMs are starting to produce sub-$100 HDMI sticks with Bay Trail-T CPUs and 16 GB–32 GB of eMMC storage inside."
I'm very interested in this, but it's the first I've heard of it, please can you share some examples? They sound like a great match for a Motorola Lapdock (I have one, but currently unused).
This is probably not it because it has an Imagination GPU, as opposed to the Intel ones in Bay Trail.
This is probably an old Moorefield-thingy to copy the Apple TV, like the Z3560. (which is sad considering that Bay Trail is available, but it probably wouldn't allow to have the same margins.)
I thought that was strange as well. Any phone or tablet app in the Play Store that uses native code will not be compatible. I'm guessing they did this to make it more attractive to game developers. PlayStation, XBox, and PC are now all x86 platforms. Makes it easier for top game studios to also target Google Player if it runs the same architecture.
actually, 99% of native apps should work flawlessly _on the condition_ that they're downloaded from the Play Store. intel has something called the Houdini for AOT binary translation: http://stackoverflow.com/a/13005569/38749
Interesting! I didn't know that Intel had such a feature. Most vanilla apps will run fine on any Android JVM, but I was wondering how Intel was going to support apps that use the native interface.
Probably so they can use Player as a way of getting Atom ready for phones. The Atom chips use more power, but it doesn't matter because they'll not be running off battery.
To me it makes total sense. Intel's Atom has facilities to do hardware accelerated H.264 video decoding[0]. They're both low power chips (ARM and Atom) so can both be passively cooled, ARM is just more focused on minimalism, whereas the Intel Atom is a little bit more feature rich (which is great if you happen to be utilising one of those features, as in this case).
There is so little innovation going on in the apple tv-esque space. All of these devices look and act exactly the same (Fire, AppleTV, this thing, Roku, etc)
Stares at the lack of Amazon Instant Video on Android and rolls eye. I stopped giving amazon money for videos and music until they have it on Android as they already have it on Fire, and iOS.
1. You can get Amazon Instant Video on your cellular tablet if you use the Amazon Appstore directly. It's kinda vague on the distinction between a cellular tablet and a phone.
2. Amazon Instant Video works just fine if you sideload the Amazon for Phones and Amazon Instant Video apps.
There's an Amazon app for Roku that I use pretty heavily. Wonder how long that will last now that they have their own Roku competitor though.
The pissing contest between vendors is ridiculous though. I vowed to stop using Google things until they quit being childish with Microsoft and Windows Phone. But all of Microsoft's apps work just fine on my iPhone. Amazon's not the only one who can be petty.
The difference is that nobody uses Windows Phone, so it hasn't been worth Amazon's, Google's, or Apple's resources to build their media consumption services for that platform.
Android (minus Fire), on the other hand, has a huge install base, and it's ridiculous that Amazon Instant Video took so long to properly support that platform.
There's no dedicated app in Google Play, but you can enable Amazon Instant Video streaming inside the Amazon app. It's still an unnecessary hurdle, but the silo is slowly being demolished.
That seems unfair. The Fire TV had some innovations (voice search, game controller support, advanced parental controls.) This Nexus thing seems to have copied most of those.
The lack of Ethernet is a deal breaker for me. Ethernet is the only thing my chromecast is missing. I don't want games or apps, just a stable internet connection.
I've used the R-pi and now a Intel NUC with XBMC and for watching streams I could tell that I had major issues with WIFI.
Everything is SO much better with a proper network cable.
I've had the pleasure of using one of these for the past month and it's been really great. I have a Chromecast that I used all the time before, but because I can cast to the Android TV (Player), I don't use the Chromecast anymore (I only have one TV).
The whole UI feels very snappy, and videos load very quickly.
The game pad feels great in my hands. No complaints there.
The selection of games on Google Play isn't huge (yet?). I currently see 16 games listed on it for download/purchase. My favorite so far is Leo's Fortune. I enjoyed it on my Nexus 5 when it came out, but after playing it on Android TV, I won't even play it on the phone anymore because I've experienced how much better the game is with a controller. I suspect that's going to be the case with a lot of games that come out for Android in the future. Touch interface only games have a lot of limitations.
Besides Netflix, you can also use Plex (PlexPass subscribers only right now) and that works pretty flawlessly as well.
I've been very happy with the whole setup and I'll be recommending it to all who are in the market for a set top box.
Um, does it support playing files from local Samba stores? At least through app? (Plex refuses to make a build for my Synology NAS so that's out of the question.)
This is a legitimate question, not a troll. Are there actually any mobile games out there that you would want to play on your tv with a controller?
Pretty much every mobile game I have ever tried has been a cesspool of micropayment dark patterns, or else something that really just serves to kill time when there is nothing else to do (riding the bus, waiting at an office, etc.)
With the chromecast, I have no interest in another box that plays video content. Having a dedicate box to play casual android games on my tv isnt very appealing to me either.
I think this is the initial release for a bigger tv interactive system. One that can launch games, shows, movies, photo viewing, wii style casual games for 1-4 people, video chatting (via Hangouts, needs camera or use phone camera), etc. Think family set top box connected to your Google ecosystem; this is your home Google Home portal. Running Chromium or a close facsimile.
If you are a cord cutter this may be your new set top box.
It does not replace Google TV, as that is the third party vendor vertical. However Google TV could die if third parties see the Player as competition or are unable to get features in Player into their Google TV's.
I do think that a chromecast in a boxed set with a simple 4" wifi-only Android tablet would have been the more "Google/Android" solution to the problem this device is attempting to solve, but that would leave the fledgeling Ouya-esque gaming world off the table.
To me the big failing of the Chromecast is families, where the kids will not necessarily own their own smartphone. This device comes with a bundled remote.
However, that's a huge change in the Android world because up until now every official Google Android-device has been touch-enabled. Switching to a remote control is very significant.
correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the chromecast require that you use another device to stream content to it? i.e. to play netflix, I have to stream the video from my phone or something to the device?
My chromecast sits unused in a drawer because I hate to have to use my phone / tablet to watch TV (lack of tactile feedback, phone lock timeout, and being distracted by work email when I'm trying to relax). This thing has a remote, which is a huge win for me. Maybe it even has an IR receiver (or one could be plugged in via USB), which would allow better integration with my harmony.
Also, you'll probably be able to side-load xbmc on it without rooting, like you can on a Ouya, an Amazon FireTV or (rooted) AppleTV to get full access to your media library, to act as a PVR front end, & to give you access to the vast world of shady XBMC plugins.
The open question for me is what sort of video the thing will be able to play back natively. And whether or not you can side-load Amazon Instant Video
This is a common misconception. Chromecast runs "actual applications", which are controlled by an application on a separate device like a phone or tablet. One of those applications (I believe the least useful one) enables you to mirror a display from the controlling device. But most of the applications are things like netflix, google play movies, and hbogo - very similar to the nexus player.
By run actual apps, I mean actually run the app's code on the device. There is no netflix app for the chromecast, it requires a separate device with the netflix app.
The chromecast is a glorified wireless hdmi dongle.
For most purposes the Chromecase doesn't really act like an hdmi dongle. With Netflix for example, the chromecast does all the streaming directly from Netflix. The Netflix app on the phone just tells the chromecast what URLs to play. Once it's streaming, you can power the phone off if you want.
I guess I'm being pedantic by saying that there is clearly an application running on the chromecast, which the controlling device sends information to, because it's admittedly more like a dumb proxy for the application running on the controlling device. But it's not like it is completely dependent on that device - you can turn on a movie and turn off your phone while you watch it.
Yea I understand that, I know there's an actual CPU running actual code but I was trying to make the distinction between a full blown app and something that just streams a url given to it by a device.
Chromecast runs an app inside that does the streaming.
Phone/tablet just setup the URL for the stream.
You can easily verified this by setup the chromecast to stream from youtube with a phone after it start play, you can turn off the phone and and it would still be playing.
The phone/table for chromecast is just a fancy remote control.
Ouya was an almost great implementation of that idea... honestly, I think the controllers were pretty bad. The fact that you have to put the Ouya on its' side to get decent controller reception is close to unforgivable. It just wasn't quite fast enough for a full screen interface. Also, the media options were an also ran. It's okay as an emulator box, but the gimped controllers ruin the experience... I have two ps3 controllers that I haven't tried with it as of yet, but plan to.
Now we need a $20 google audiocaster. It would kill the airplay speaker market for android devices. You can hack it with a $20 hdmi to 3.5mm audio adaptor, but then it becomes a $55 device.
I'm somewhat surprised there is no ethernet in this player. For some places, wifi just doesn't work in their environment.
In my experience bluetooth speakers require a lot of pairing/un pairing work and extra menu taps, while wifi speakers are one tap once you've set them up.
Nexus Q was so bizarre. They included a stereo amp in it and you could run speakers directly. I'm sure that added a lot to the price when most people are either going to plug it into their TV or their existing receiver.
I've been anxiously awaiting this. We're thinking of shipping an enterprise product on the Amazon Fire TV, but it's relative lack of control is quite limiting. Hopefully this is priced similarly.
I've tried nearly every android TV stick, and while they are pretty close to what we need, and infinitely customizable, we had trouble getting consistent hardware. It seemed like each batch would behave slightly differently.
Same here, I want a Fire TV but Amazon's particular flavor of android seems to be a lot more locked down than ASOP and has a smaller ecosystem. This will be perfect for me.
That just furthers my suspicion that this is some sort of reference board implementation. Curious that Google is entering the game as late as they are.
For disclosure, I should say I have and rather enjoy a FireTv. Not the most amazing device ever, but more than capable of what it is made to do. (And more to the point, does a good job by me.)
I don't get this. I have a Chromecast + nexus 7 as a remote and its already my preferred way of watching Netflix etc. Much better than a clusmly remote.
I hope this doesn't mean there backtracking on Chromecast.
Google Cast sounds a bit too good to be true, just like the Chromecast was. I hated the Chromecast 'cause it simply didn't have enough content for me and the performance was terrible.
I'll have to wait and see how the performance for the Google Cast is. I'd like it to at least be as good as my ability to airplay HD MKV files to an Apple TV.
I have a chromecast too, its not even plugged in, I hate having to "cast" to it from another device. I use a raspberry-pi with xbmc running on it, but this could be great.... could be.
Shame it comes with a much weaker Atom processor instead of the new 64-bit Tegra processor, that's already in the Nexus 9 tablet. That decision doesn't make any sense to me, which shows once again that Google's Intel-related decisions are all political, and not technical.
Ah, this will replace my RPi with XBMC (for local playback) and Chromecast combo nicely - not having to use two devices will clear up some HDMI space on the receiver :)
The Android TV interface looks pretty sleek as well.
I have a similar setup to you. I'm not sure where you're storing your local content, mine is all on a couple of external USB HDDs connected to the R-Pi.
I'm not seeing how the Nexus Play is going to replace the R-Pi running XBMC.....
My initial take is that the Nexus Play is like paying $65 extra for a chromecast that has a remote. I realize there is more to it than that (due to it running full android) but for my use case that doesn't seem to matter much.
Feel quite certain we will see Apple announce 4th generation Apple TV tomorrow with a gaming capable A7 processor for Metal games, and voice capable remote control the same as Nexus Player.
"Start here, finish there" is one of the good features. However is not really new, I can do the same with Amazon Prime ( w/ App from Smart Tv and App on Tablet ).
For a start, roku has an extremely closed app development policy. Have you seen how you develop apps for the Roku? The Player will have it open just like other devices.
On amazon, Roku 3 streaming player costs 90USD. So, it's the same price range. Except that Player will have more apps in no time.
(And from a developer perspective, Roku is using a custom language. You read that right, a DSL of their own)
@freehunter: I cannot reply to you for some reason. but ouya was marketed as a gaming device. Completely different thing compared to how Roku is marketed.
HN is kind of weird with the comments. If you don't see the "reply" button, click "link" then there should be a comment box that will work.
Anyway, no one knows how this will play out, but Roku didn't kill Apple TV, FireTV didn't kill either, and I wouldn't expect this thing to do much damage in the very crowded market either, all things considered. Brand name doesn't mean that much these days, as Microsoft and Blackberry can tell you. What matters is how cool it is and how quick the adoption and lock-in is. Lots of people already have smart TVs, gaming consoles, or Apple TV/Roku devices.
It's targeting the same market-segment with a similarly priced device, which will have much better app-support on a living platform which is in active development.
It may even work outside the US without setting up a bunch of proxies and hacking your router! Yay!
And it can play games too, which I guess is a deal to some people.
But the Roku has wired ethernet and this has not, so for now my Roku not going anywhere.
I think this is just a rebranding to distance Android TV from the failure that was Google TV. I'm taking bets on what the name of the next revision will be when Android TV fails.
There were several reasons Google TV failed. One of the biggest was that it launched with no NDK support so games of any high caliber were not portable to it.
>Get your apps on Google Play, or rent a movie if your app doesn’t have what you’re looking for
What? Are they exclusively targeting movie content with this? It doesn't make much sense to rent a movie if store apps don't have a feature I am looking for.
I guess I'm just not the average user, but the Chromecast handily beats what this (and other options in this genre, i.e., Apple TV / Fire TV / Roku) have to offer. I don't want another remote control. And making my phone the best remote control is an awesome solution. And the Chromecast doesn't take up any room in my living room / entertainment center. And it's only thrity-five-goddamn-dollars.
I guess the downside is that I can't play crappy games on my big screen. Darn.