Slashdot Mirror
Google Breaks ChromeCast's Ability To Play Local Content
sfcrazy writes "Bad news for all ChromeCast users who were thinking of being able to stream local content to their HD TVs. Google has pushed an update for ChromeCast which has broken support for third-party apps like AirCast (AllCast) which allow users to 'stream' local files from their devices to ChromeCast connected TV sets."
I don't know much (even after reading the article), but it seems more like as if they just want the chromecast to dish out online content so that google can keep on feeding people adds.
When I powered cycled my ChromeCast a couple of hours ago, I noticed that it installed a new update.
I then launch my Chrome browser and open several local files of type MP4 (video), PDF, and PPT (powerpoint), and I am still able to successfully cast these to my ChromeCast on my HDTV, with this type of URL:
file://{LOCAL_DIRECTORY}/{LOCAL_FILE}
Even the MP4 video plays nice on my HDTV in FullScreen.
I have not had time to do a packet inspection yet via WireShark, so I cannot speak about the complexity of the protocol used to transmit the content locally.
I am not denying that something with ChromeCast might have changed, since the author is likely telling the truth, and may have been using some "hack" or trick that they used to simplify incorporating their 3rd party support.
But considering that I have my Chrome browser at version 29.0.1547.57 which was not updated in the last 5 days, I would think that any 3rd party app could still be modified to support ChromeCast with the same protocol used by the Chrome browser, NetFlix, YouTube, etc.
Get a Roku. Cheap and awesome, and it'll go with you if you switch TVs or upgrade.
Do you have a Roku? You can't stream your own content with Roku either, so it essentially the same, just a different manufacturer.
Frankly I am surprised in this case. Being able to stream content is a selling point with broad appeal, unlike say Other OS on the PS3 which was only used by a tiny fraction of PS3 owners.
Good argument, except it's unlikely they are making money on the hardware, so the goal is not to sell Chromecast devices, the goal is to allow people to buy Chromecast devices at cost in order to be able to sell content, and to sell content in order to sell advertising. For a bare-bones devices, it's unlikely that additional economies of scale are going to increase their profit margin on the hardware any, and it may in fact be a loss-leader, like the PS/2 or original XBox.
I still wonder why people go through all the fuss over media players... Samsung, LG and others have TVs and Blu-Ray players that are capable of playing MKV files and such from local drives or streamed from DLNA, and the players can be had for less than $50 when you catch the right sales. As a bonus, you also can play DVDs, BDs and optical discs full of loose media files.
On the negative side, I don't get a lot of fancy presentation, and I don't have emulators and such running on it, but that's fine. I never really understood the excitement over Roku boxes - I also get plenty of online streaming services through my Blu-ray players and TV (I have one "smart" TV, but the rest in the house have the aforementioned Blu-Ray players).
For anything beyond that, I'll build an HTPC so I can also leverage my Steam library (not too excited about the next gen consoles, either).
While it was $99, it can play movies from a USB stick OR a NAS. Plus stream from my Netflix and AmazonPrime accounts. Not all that interested in the 100 other streaming services they offer. I bought it because I could plug in a USB stick and watch whatever. They added the NAS feature recently.
but instead of the boringly predictable GOOGLE IS EVIL!!!!1eleventy karma-whoring[1], shall we examine why exactly this third-party program broke with the new update?
Were they, perchance, using an undocumented API, or one that was known to be unstable?
This seems to be the public API for Chromecast: https://developers.google.com/cast/devprev
but I'm not enough of a programmer to tell if there's explicit support for the kind of thing AirCast does; however, get a load of this:
So it seems my guess was correct and you're all bellyaching about a program taking advantage of an unstable API, with a feature not guaranteed to be there, and when the documentation recommends not distributing production apps yet.
In short, non-story click-whoring. I hope you're proud of yourselves.
[1] I know I'll get modded down for this, but...
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It didn't break tab casting from Chrome at all.
If you read the original post, it only breaks Koush's Cast app for Android, which worked around the whitelisting restrictions to cast content directly.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Mod parent up. The headline should be "Google breaks Allcast use of Chromecast in unintended ways." It's much less remarkable when you realize that the ability to play local content was not an intended or advertised feature of the Chromecast(although it should be).
You can with Plex.
...which is a Roku add-on and it requires a PC component to serve the files. The Roku, natively, can't stream directly from a local network source such as a NAS. At best, it's a hack and it while it works, it doesn't work as well as a native solution would.
I'd like to find one single device that can stream from all of my sources natively. Is that really too much to ask?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Again, this just illustrates the hack nature of this process. That the Plex service (or Roxsbox, which is essentially the same thing) can run directly on the NAS is irrelevant. It's still a collection of third-party tools that involve setting up remote agents off of the player unit (the Roku, in this case). I can stream on my Android tablet from a plain SMB NAS with no additional agent software or intermediary. Direct. I should be able to do the same thing with a Roku (or any of the other similar devices on the market).
Each one of them lacks a key feature. Either they can't stream from an SMB NAS, they don't have YouTube, they don't do Netflix, etc. There's always something. That each of these can be streamed from SOME device means that they're being deliberately left out of the ones that "can't".
I'm not asking for transcoding, either. If your device doesn't have enough power to transcode, that's fine. But I can copy a file from my SMB NAS to a thumbdrive and play it directly on my Roku. That is a bush league hack in 2013. It already has network access, there should be no reason to force me to use sneakernet.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
In other words there is no evidence they deliberately tried to break it, they just made a change to their private API that happened to interfere with it. The same thing has happened a few times to people using undocumented Google APIs, like the guy from a few years back claiming that Google deliberately broke his tracking-free search mash-up site when in fact they just retired an ancient Palm version of their homepage he was parsing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It would be suprising if this didn't happen. the API for 3rd party aps is still in beta and to sign up for the dev program right now tell you this sdk is for dev purposes right now and not production use.. ( https://developers.google.com/cast/downloads/ ) Eventually I expect the ability to cast content from my android devices, but for right now Google has been very clear to devs the state the cast is in right now.