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It’s barely a week old and for those that have been experiencing issues with their Chromecast, Google is hot on the case with a software update. The bug fixing update is said to address performance, reliability, and security and while I personally haven’t experienced anything too weird with my Chromecast, I have seen reports of display issues and whatnot.
Chromecast Product Manager Ambarish Kenghe mentions that users wont have to do anything in order to receive the update, and that it will rolling out over-the-air over the next few days. Current build number is 12078 with the update being 12840. Fingers crossed I can screencast my entire desktop for more than a few seconds now.
[Chrome]
Thanks, _epic!
Play Music is also updated with Chromecast improvements.
Saw that, must have been small improvements as they didn’t say specifically what they were :P
hope its the ability to cast side loaded music files. my first and only disappointment so far.
Well it casts from the cloud, not your phone. I would think you would need to upload that music to google music account for it to work. Have you tried that?
i have songs that I haven’t pushed to the cloud and are only stored locally. obviously, at some point I just need to push them, but its still an inconvenience to me. albeit minor. really hoping that poweramp adds chromecast support. that would really be the best.
Not sure how that would help you outside of using poweramp. Chromecast works by streaming content from the cloud/web using your device as a remote control. It doesn’t play content from your device. Therefore if the content is only on your device you can’t cast it no matter what program you use. Now, if someone can hax the chromecast so it plays local content, then that is a whole different story.
Maybe I’m not understanding what you are hoping for?
i understand that already. guess i wasn’t clear. what i’m saying is that it would be cool if poweramp either a) added cloud support/access to your google play library (because it is honestly a much better player in every way) and thus be more fitted for chromecast or b) somehow finds a way to cast local content and adds that feature.
Gotcha. I agree
Chromecast / Netflix app has the ability to completely lock-up the Nexus 4 at least. Sleep of death, where the display won’t power back on.
Not sure if they need to update Chromecast for that, or the Netflix app.
I think this was confirmed to be a Android 4.3/Netflix problem?
Unfortunately, I can’t remember the source atm, but I don’t think it’s related to Chromecast.
EDIT:
Source: http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/07/31/google-is-aware-of-the-device-hanging-issue-with-netflix-on-android-4-3-has-top-men-working-on-a-fix/
It’s only related to official 4.3. AOSP roms aren’t affected.
As it stands now this device is not very useful to me. Just as soon as I am able to use it with a podcast app (like Podcast Addict), that will make all the difference. Just the simple ability to send it a video URL to play would be quite a step forward.
Anything that’ll play inside chrome can cast directly to it… Using spotify with it right now.
I wrote an app to do exactly that (send a URL to stream). I have used it to stream local content directly to my Chromecast by making my local content available on a simple web server. Streaming directly to the Chromecast from a URL is disgustingly fast compared to the “cast a tab” method. As soon as Google finalizes their API, apps like this will be all over the place.
Mind sharing that app? haha
If you are familiar with creating android applications, it really isn’t that hard. I used the sample project that Google provided and made a few adjustments to allow me to type in a URL instead of selecting the content from a dropdown. I would be happy to share it if Google didn’t explicitly tell its developers to not release anything till they finalize the API. Wouldn’t want them to revoke my whitelisted chromecasts and receiver domain…
“whitelisted chromecasts and receiver domain”
Ugh…. That sort of talk makes me hate this device. Dealing with that sort of crap makes it a pain to tinker with.
If you read over the SDK documents, you would realize its not really that complicated. Whitelisting my device and domain took less than 24 hours, (have to fill out a 5 field form on Google’s developer site), and a receiver is simply an html page with a custom javascript file supplied by Google to control the page using your device. Nothing really more complicated than registering a unique signature key with Google for publishing an android application.
Yeah, but that’s very reason is why the Chromecast application selection is so limited right now. I mean, the thing listens on port 8008 and there are a few interesting commands that you can send it. Why can’t you just send it a command to play a video URL? And maybe some stop/pause/play commands. Or they could get really fancy and put in a command to seek to a certain position.
If I’m just writing some personal scripts, I don’t want to deal with registration and whitelisting crap.
Sweet news! So far so good, my Chromecast has been awesome. The app from the Android end has gotten somewhat buggy, but it works! Desktop streaming has been laggy, but the Wi-Fi may be more to blame for that. Hopefully this will get me less dropped frames when streaming from the desktop at least!
It seems that if I have anyone else on my network streaming videos then the casting of the desktop, particularly hulu, doesn’t work at all. Seems like they need to performance tune some things. A wifi network should have plenty of bandwidth and my internet runs around 30Mbs.
At the time is was just me testing it out on the network, I was up late trying to get it working. Well it worked, just way more laggy than I would have liked.
What kind of wifi network are you running? and what are the specs on your pc? if you don’t mind me asking? Also have you tried looking at your task manager for the processor when it starts lagging to see if thats your problem?
Windows Vista, 32 bit. Intel Pentium dual core, E2200 @ 2.2GHz, 2 GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6770.
It’s an older system for sure. But it runs most stuff just fine. I don’t know what you want to know about my network, it’s Century Link, fiber optic connection, I get about 6.7 MB/s down times and 0.81MB/s up times. I don’t think bandwidth is my problem though as I can be running several devices running things like Netflix and other stuff pretty easily. Only when I’m doing something like running Netflix and downloading a large file at the same time will it start ot noticeably slow down and start cutting framerates on Netflix.
I haven’t looked at the processes while running Chromecast, but I’ve disabled many of the processes I don’t need running.
I did get a little less lag when I stopped all the extraneous processes and put the HDMI extender on the Chromecast stick itself and angled it up. I think if the signal were a little stronger I might get decent streaming from my PC via Chromecast. But hey casting from other devices is pretty much completely lag free so I’m pretty happy about that.
For network I was looking for what kind of router you are using for instance mine is a dual band 2.4ghz/5ghz linksys dual band n900 (450 on 2.4ghz and 450 on 5ghz) for mirroring its your local network that is going to matter not your internet speed. chromecast can’t use the 5ghz though so if anything it creates more problems.
Processor you are about the same as me, and when I tried mirroring I max out my processor as soon as I try any video. I don’t know if your system has these options available, but I upgraded from vista 32bit to win7 64bit and 4 gb of ram, and the results were shockingly good, I can have almost 3 times as many chrome tabs open as I used to and everything is so much smoother, windows 7 is really kind of amazing.
I honestly don’t know. I’m using the generic CenturyLink router.
Wish MX video had chromecast support, its my default although its not playing nice with 4.3
I can’t imagine it’ll be long before it does. They released the API for this very purpose, right?
people keep saying they are using google play music, is anyone actually running it through the android app? i never get a casting button. and if so is all access required to get it working?
Yes. I have used the Play Music app on my N7 and N4 and I have never had a problem. However, I am on all access. I never heard of that being a requirement though.
I updated the app to latest version still no chromecast button. I tried using a song i downloaded/streamed from the play store.
It might have to do with a weird problem i’ve been having…
Netflix and youtube on android on my phone work great.
I was able to initially set the chromecast up using my pc. Netflix, youtube, and chrome tabs work from it.
But… the chromecast setup app on android has never been able to find chromecast. So maybe until that works, play music doesn’t work? It seems like a bug of some sort. Only thing I can think of is maybe my dual band router is messing with it. Although both the chromecast and my phone are on the 2.4ghz network and my pc which does work is on the 5ghz network, so who knows.
My Play Music app didn’t work either. Have you tried force stopping the app and clearing cache in the system settings. That worked for me.
Have you updated the app?
The first day I got my Chromecast I tried out all the compatible apps just for fun and Play Music worked without a hitch. I’m not on All Access.
It doesn’t work if it is set to music on “Device Only”
Man I need to get mine set up. It was being a pain in the ass last night and not wanting to get onto my network.
Got my Chromecast setup last night and it works like a charm. I’ve never watched soo many YouTube videos at one sitting! There’s a lot of content on there…
still waiting for amazon to ship the dongle……*twiddle*
I can just see this update breaking root.
it has
I’m not sure “OTA” means what you think it means.
Over The Air
Just turned on my TV, chromecast received the update :-)
Nothing obvious has changed tho
Any chance of google drive support (i.e. Google Docs) ? I have a desire to use this in our office environment as a means of data sharing in conference meetings.
It’s probably just breaks the current rooting method…
I want it to connect to my 5GHZ network : /
Don’t we all? the hardware just doesn’t support it. In slightly better news, my 5ghz laptop is able to cast to it, after setting it up on the 2.4ghz. dual band routers seem to be pretty hit and miss with chromecast for now.
What is the advantage of the Chromecast versus say… A Zealz gk802 hdmi stick?
Is miracast better than this?