Does anyone have Google Cast?

[Old Ironmaker]

I am trying to drag our baby boomer butts into the 20th century. Looks like a nice stocking stuffer, my wife loves music and we have a nice sound system on the TV. We have everything here that it requires so it should work including router compatibility.

 

The question is if anyone has it does it work?

 

It's only $39.00 and comes with 90 days of free Google Media. I have no idea what the price of streaming Google Media is, it might be a great way for Google to generate some income. I'm a skeptic and frugal, not cheap and untrustworthy.

 

Thanks all,

 

Johnny D

[jace]

I do and i find it very slow and pretty glitchy. It takes forever to load a stream, it often locks up and/or plays sound with no video, or it gets stuck in playing a video even after you've hit the thing to stop and the only way i've found to get around that is to unplug it from power. this is from a variety of sources and devices, playing both local files and streamed, and i get the same results. My internet is 35mbps, wifi is AC so bandwidth is not the problem. I also have a US market roku 3 (additional channel apps) and it's nearly perfect. I would highly recommend that over the chromecast..

[Old Ironmaker]

That enough info for me thanks.

[steelhead75]

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/android-tv-boxes-what-are-they-and-what-can-they-do/

 

look into one of theese lots on kijijij great for all kinds of media try and get a qaud core

[Raf]

the android boxes are good but require more tinkering than the Roku/WD boxes. if you're looking for a no nonsense device go with the latter. chromecast is a nice device but as noted can be glitchy and definately falls into the tinkerer category.

 

still not clear on what you want to do with these devices though. you mentioned streaming audio, do you watch netflix or any other online services?

Edited December 7, 2014 by Raf

[jace]

I had one of the rikomagic android sticks before the chromecast. The rikomagic for me was even worse. I had the same kind of crashing, it was unable to play video without lag or buffering, could only play low res youtube videos smoothly, often just crashed and rebooted. There was a microSD card on the device i had and it couldnt even play small video's from it without bogging down. I sold that to a friend 2 summers ago and went to the chromecast thinking it might be better with google behind it instead of no-name joes. I still have the chromecast and roku 3 but the chromecast just sits in the tv. My newest gadget is the raspberry pi 512B and i plan on trying a few things like xbmc with it, this will likely do anything you need but you essentially build it and the OS from scratch.

 

Before all of this, i ran smb and sftp servers and streamed directly to devices using apps that read files directly from remote sources without first downloading the whole file. For iOS on ipad/iphone, Buzz player works best for me. On android tablets/phone the popular (and free) ESTrong app does it best. On Windows/Mac/Linux, i use the free VLC player from videolan.org. This is the most universal solution by far because it'll work for almost anything including tv's, pc's, mac's, and just about any modern device that can be networked, but this setup is probably more involved than you want.

 

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/android-tv-boxes-what-are-they-and-what-can-they-do/

 

look into one of theese lots on kijijij great for all kinds of media try and get a qaud core

Edited December 8, 2014 by j ace

[blaque]

ive used the chromecast for quite a while now without any issues.

[Old Ironmaker]

the android boxes are good but require more tinkering than the Roku/WD boxes. if you're looking for a no nonsense device go with the latter. chromecast is a nice device but as noted can be glitchy and definately falls into the tinkerer category.

 

still not clear on what you want to do with these devices though. you mentioned streaming audio, do you watch netflix or any other online services?

Raf it was to be used for music, not into Netflix at all. It all is a moot point because I ran into our local satellite guy who did our Xplornet dish and he tells me we don't have enough " band width" I think he said. He said it will be sketchy, he's the expert around here. We only were able to get 56K modem until 2 years ago when someone put up a tower my square dish can see. That's why we have been off line for over 10 years at home here and I had a IT gale at my office I depended on to do all admin stuff when I had the business, much has changed since 2004, actually pretty well everything. I should have been listening to her more closly.

 

j ace, you have to remember you are talking to a 60 year old. I go as far back as Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS, yes pre Windows OS and you lost me at the first acronym. You guys have to remember Moses and I played ball together at school when we used chisels and tablets of limestone to write with.

 

Thanks all, much appreciated.

Edited December 8, 2014 by Old Ironmaker

[SirCranksalot]

I was thinking of getting one of these. The reviews I read on-line were mostly positive wit the odd negative one from guys who bought them for the wrong reasons.

 

I am hoping to be able to 'project'(stream?) my photos from my laptop unto the TV so I we can inflict slideshows on the unsuspecting who come visiting. I was planning to talk to the sales "associate" about this but maybe some of you folks know if that can be done.

 

Also, can it project a DVD movie in the drive of my laptop unto the TV?

 

thx

[Raf]

ahh ok. so you're out in a rural area with limited internet access. been there done that -- most people living in urban centers don't realize the state of rural internet in canada is akin to a 3rd world nation. your options for internet providers are satellite, wireless through the big three telcos -- which had pathetic usage limits when I was on it, don't know if it has changed, or, if you have a local guy providing wireless 4g. the last is likely your best option if available. until then, any of these boxes will be able to play local content on your tv but that's about it.