RIP to a real one.
Back in the day when streaming was cheap as hell and made sense as all things were on Netflix, having a Home Mini with and a Chromecast was bliss.
I used to have a shortcut for the phrase “I’m so tired”, it would start playing Star Trek TNG from Netflix on the Chromecast monitor and it just werked. Saved me from a bad trip once too, I was really uncomfortable on 135ug so in a desperate attempt to hold onto reality I said “alexa…uhmm…uh…hey google play RoboCop” and it just worked.
Only thing is it played the wrong RoboCop (2014) but that only distracted me from spiraling further, like “hold up Samuel L Jackson was in this?”
It feels weird to say but I was a genuinely happy customer. Then the home mini stopped working as well, started triggering by itself, didn’t hear words right, then the Chromecast had trouble updating firmware and rebooting. Then Netflix platformed that douchebag chapelle.
Now all that’s left of it is the pihole I used to block ads for it.
I pretty much exclusively used my chrome cast to bypass smart TV bullshit and stream my movies and TV shows stored on my pc and phone to my TV.
Whats my next move when my chromecast audio dies? I love that thing
Ottercast, but you gotta build it yourself!
Pi zero + squeezebox + usb sound card
Squeezebox has been through several names through the years. It’s now called the “Lyrion Music Server.”
AudioCast - exactly the same, but different producer. I have both.
Will existing devices continue to work “forever” or must we add them to the graveyard?
Not “forever” but they should continue to work it seems. They will degrade and slowly stop working over time tho, no clue how long.
On another news “Why is everyone hating google now?” lol
Add it to the pile of dead google projects
Killedbygoogle com
Nope, though the clickbait title would make you believe so. Nothing is discontinued.
(They are just changing the name)
They are literally no going to make the dongles any more
The Chromecast is a small $35 dongle that goes behind your TV. This new thing is a whole $99 set-top box with an AI integration. They’re not really the same product.
That’s fair
Dead successful projects.
I guess onn is going to completely take over the low price streaming box market then.
Mines been packed away for a few years now
Switched to apple TV already. Googles lame ad infused cheap plastic remote did the trick on me. They have to pay ME if they want a Youtube and Netflix ad laying on my table at home.
… and suddenly Netflix disappears from it.
Don’t turn your remote over or you’ll have an Apple ad laying around.
I know haha google graveyard funny, but over a decade of production only to be replaced by a similar product is a financial success.
Everyone knows after any commercial success the best thing you can do is rebrand by announcing the death of the successful product \s
Me - Ok Google, give me a open source way to turn my raspberry pi into a 4k streaming box.
Google - Got it. Playing Tyler Swift on living room tv
Me - wtf?
KDE Plasma Big screen looks promising. Combine it with TV friendly apps like Jellyfin and plasma tube, and it should be pretty competitive and actually receive updates.
Thanks for mentioning KDE Plasma Big Screen it’s an interesting attempt. It’s written in Qt, like many of the TV UIs today anyway. I need to check it out.
Yeah, I’m thinking of trying it out once my fan less N100 box arrives from china. Should have much better AV1 performance and subtitle rendering performance than my Google TV.
I had a “fun” experience the other month with my Google TV where it was refusing to connect to my Jellyfin server. Turns out Google hasn’t updated the HTTPS CAs in over 2 years, and it was no longer compatible with the latest Let’s Encrypt X2 certificates which was announced back in 2020. Android TV has some good apps, but it is a software, ads, and security nightmare.
HardKernel makesa a few ODROID models that come with available Android TV builds. Some have the same chipset as the AMLogic on the CCwGTV 4K and they aren’t terribly expensive. If I wanted an open source Chromecast replacement I’d go for that.
I’ve never even seen this thing? All the Chromecast I’ve seen over the last 4-5 years have been in-built modules in Android TVs.
Let’s hope this doesn’t only support FAT32 so we can actually add movies to it
This is why I’d never invest in anything Google.
It’s already rolling the dice to see if they enshitify things fast enough to ruin it for me, but now you know they will just kill whatever you have been using on a whim
Isn’t Chromecast built into most devices now? Why would someone need a dongle to do what the TV can do natively? Otherwise something like an Nvidia Shield is a better option anyway.
Because some smart TVs will up and brick themselves by irreparably filling their storage with various updates to the point of no longer being able to install or even update anything on the TV whatsoever THANK YOU Samsung)
No? Some of the most popular TV brands like LG and Samsung don’t. And if your TV doesn’t have Android, buying a Chromecast is a super cheap way to get it.
I have an amazing 4k oled TV but it doesn’t have android so I still had to buy a Chromecast for it because otherwise I had no way to watch TV.
Old, dumb or smart TVs without a connection to the internet but still want to either cast to or browse on.
I use mine to avoid using the Samsung UI which I also piholed the hell out of for Samsung ad services…
I’ll stick to my Nvida Shield thank you very much. They are slow as hell with updates but when they do they even update the old 2017 devices.
Hopefully people will reverse engineer the firmware and protocol so that the old devices aren’t total landfill.
Google have lost their mind…
I think it just means google would stop selling it as the new google TV streamer is up for sale. My Chromecast from 2015 is still working till this day.
As long as they don’t completely nix the support à la Spotify Car Thing I’m fine with it
