ChromeCast your life

I just bought a chromecast and woah is it cool. I decided to write a tutorial/review of my experiences so far(3 hours)

CASTING Youtube video from my desktop to my device

Simple, when you install the chomecast it adds an icon
allowing you to send chrome tabs and youtube videos to the device.

Casting movies

Video Stream google chrome app

This has been at great debate on the internet forums, I found VideoStream for Chromecast it allows you to select a video file on your desktop and send it to the device incl mkv, avi, mpg, mp4 files. pretty cool. Does NOT support: subtitiles, video memory of where you are. When you’re playing the video, a new tab opens up allowing you to control the video Pause/Play and using a time slider on the video to seek in almost realtime (you need to press pause).

Cast entire screen (experimantal)

Another GREAT option is to view using : New CAST ENTIRE Screen (experimental) : allows you to well, mmm cast your entire screen it’s experimental although I found no problems with it.

I used BSPLAYER (IMHO the best video player out there) to view a movie incl. sound:

As you can see subtitles and video not a problem, you need to mute the laptop of course but that’s almost the only drawback and makes sense. the playback is great, even at 720p extreme I got great performance on my I7 HP ENVY laptop, but you can always switch to 720p or even 420 if you WIFI/Laptop/GPU is not up for the task.

 

 

 

View Videos from Samsung S3 device

I downloaded the app, and used Viral HD which I found only today, which is SOOOO COOOL. It allows background playback, and shows all the latest viral videos and on and on and on … and of course it includes CHROME CASTING. so I watched the very funny marauder top gear video (watch it its crazy funny) on my TV.

Chromecast in the boardroom

As I am a well seasoned presenter,  I think chromecast is ideal for video projectors/ lcd TVs. I am sure someone will make a real powerpoint chromecast addin (maybe even me) but for now, using the “CASTING ENTIRE SCREEN” function I mentioned earlier, you can show presentations on your tv.  The constant GoogleCast is sharing your screen can be moved using the Anchor  so that’s not such a hassle.
I believe the biggest challenge will be around security. To use chomrecast one needs to be connected to your WIFI. although companies today offer “guest-wifi” enabling users to login to demilitarized (DMZ) servers and the internet, to which the boardroom can utilize to connect the chromecast to its guest-wifi.

The future of casting …

I believe we are seeing the first glimpses of streaming to other devices. the NFC allows streaming from one phone to another, the User experience is still new and requires tweaking to make it friendly and fun for the average user to use and cast , but it exists. The biggest problem I think will be privacy and security. the chromecast is a new generation of INNEXPENSIVE devices able to stream to any TV/Projector with an HDMI port. The time will come and we will start more and better apps and abilities for the different casting vendors.
As I said before, I believe the future is security related casting apps
Currently in its infancy, chromecast connects to your wifi, however, more and more will we see parties and get-togethers' where you might not know all your guests, so apps allowing secure tranfers without allowing strangers on your wifi, ability to create party queues and playlists for chromecast are around the corner.
One such app I saw today is the very badly named VBUKIT Chromecast app that allows casting to your device without giving your WIFI password to anyone. (check it out its pretty cool and the first of many security related chromecasting apps out there I believe). It works by running a server app on the computer connected to the chromecast and allowing anyone to scan a device code and upload their data to the “server” app running the queue on the device.