One of technology’s biggest battles today is the war for the living room. As more and more content becomes available online, users continue to prefer viewing it on their television. Plenty of companies have provided ways to handle that transition. Roku and the Apple TV being among the most popular, but Google has had little success in this area. First, Google TV failed to gain adoption in the face of blocks by the various TV networks. Then, the alarmingly overpriced Nexus Q failed to even go on sale following last year’s Google I/O. Yesterday, Google announced its third attempt, a tiny HDMI dongle called the Chromecast, and the company might finally have a winner on its hands.
Chromecast appears to be a re-envisioned Nexus Q, taking most of the ill-fated orb’s best features, while leaving behind much of what caused its failure. The new dongle is controlled by any device on the same network. You can use an Android or iOS device, as well as any PC or Mac running the Chrome browser. Chromecast isn’t mirroring your screen, though. Instead, like the Nexus Q, it’s grabbing content directly from the web. That means better performance for video playback and battery life.
Chromecast is launching with support for YouTube, Google Play Music, Movies, & TV, like the Nexus Q, but Google stepped up its game and made sure to include the critical feature of Netflix streaming as well. You even get three free months of Netflix streaming when you buy Chromecast. Google has also announced an SDK that allows any app developer to stream content from the web to the Chromecast. In addition, you can send any page from your Chrome browser to the device (and now that odd name makes a lot more sense). One could almost believe this product is the first fruit of Sundar Pichai’s role as the head of Android and Chrome (though that might be too recent a devlopment to create a product like this). In any case, it doesn’t look like Chromecast suffers from the same content limitations that hurt the Nexus Q.
Chromecast’s biggest selling point, however, has got to be the price. At $35, Chromecast is only two-thrids the price of the Roku LT, probably the cheapest competitor on the market. It’s one-thrid the price of the Apple TV. And, of course, it’s little more than a tenth the cost of the Nexus Q. Chromecast may lack beautiful design, NFC device pairing, a Made in the USA label, and LEDs that visualize your music, but it’s easy to forget all of those things when you’re paying about as much as you would for a tank of gas to get Netflix and more streaming content on your TV.
This new device doesn’t completely relieve Google of its uphill battle in the living room. The competition already supports important streaming options that Chromecast lacks, like Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, and HBO Go, while Google has to hope they’re interested in this new interface to support it. Plenty of users already own other solutions or plan on buying one of the new gaming consoles that will make Google’s solution unnecessary at any price. Even with those speedbumps, this may be the first time Google has a good chance of altering the TV landscape.
Chromecast is available for pre-order on Google Play right now and begins shipping July 28 (Amazon briefly had it listed as shipping yesterday, but quickly sold out). It’s already on back-order (what Google device launch doesn’t run into immediate delays?), so jump in now if you want yours any time in the reasonably near future.
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