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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."
Why am I not surprised Google?
New signature coming soon.
bad news for Google, who was hoping that I would buy such a thing.
-- Sig under construction...
How wretched and nasty of Google to so suddenly turn to the dark side, and render the hardware useless.
Bound to happen, Google is still obliged to follow their contracts they have with the content providers. If they say they device can't do that for one reason or another then they don't have much of a choice. And we all know MPAA would NEVER EVER dare to force a content distributor in such a position. *cough*
Was really looking forward to it, now it's useless.
... and probably still will, as long as it's able to play any arbitrary content from Chrome. My idea was to drop all my media into a web-servable directory on a small server in my house and use Chrome on my laptop or phone to browse to that directory, then click the "send to chromecast" button to send it to my TV. That should still work, right? Is there anyone here who has one and is using it in that way? It's the only reason I'd get one -- I have no use at all for Yet Another Way to play hulu, netflix, youtube, etc.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Had this been Microsoft we'd be hearing that this is proof that Ballmer was sacrificing virgin children to Satan.
You guys really like to suck on that Google dick, don't ya?
Between Microsoft and Google, one is
(1) an ad agency that
(2) monetizes your private details and
(3) has a private jumbo jet for executives.
The other sells crappy software.
I don't know, I downloaded everything at the OP's link, and now nothing works.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This leaves me still looking for a way to play arbitrary local media files on my TV; I don't terribly feel like waiting for stuff to buffer - if an online service will deign to give me a sufficiently large buffer - so I always download in advance whenever feasible.
/.ers are going to be in need of a new playback device so let's try to be productive here.
Don't say "an HTPC" - I don't want to run a space heater to do this. Many Android dongles I've seen are out of date or will soon be out of date, and offer lousy codec support to boot. If you've found an exception to that, be my guest - a great many of us
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.
Have you not been paying attention to the last 10 years? Apple has repeatedly shown they've tried to beat down this sort of restrictive shit.
Remember who resulted in music losing DRM.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Corporations grow up, just like children.
This much-laundered sentiment originated with Francois Guisot (and not as widely believed the sock-prophet Winston Churchill). The genius of Bill Gates was being twenty years ahead of his time. Unfortunately, the life expectancy of a brainy conservative is twenty to thirty years (tops), before the grizzled Ebenezer-in-Chief is forcibly defenestrated.
Roughly twenty years from now, the legacy of Brin and Page will be facing its own mop reduce. Brilliant strategy on their part to postpone the day of reckoning with a youthful sojourn into saccharine Dr Evil.
My raspberry pi and Ouya still play any arbitrary content I throw at them. Take that, Google.
Dear coward:
You seem to have misread the tenor of this discussion, which reads to me like an indictment of Google's wholesale violation of their code of ethics with these antics.
Well, don't leave us hanging! Which one is which?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Have you not been paying attention to the last 10 years? Apple has repeatedly shown they've tried to beat down this sort of restrictive shit.
Remember who resulted in music losing DRM.
Apple is the rapist of ecosystems using walled prisons; proprietary connectors; proprietary API; proprietary software. They actually got caught for illegal monopolistic practices with Publishers...and have been forced to allow other companies to publish on their not your devices. The MP3 thing was a war attrition, Companies were offering DRM free on other platforms before Apple. Their not your books and movies still are.
In the form of 2.5 Watt Raspberry Pi running XBMC or similar. Not much of a space heater...
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).
Is this a surprise to anyone? Did anyone really think that once Google had control of hardware and software they'd eventually get around to limiting you to content purchased through them (or one of their partners)?
Don't buy a Chromecast if you want to view media you own or have made yourself. There are other similar devices that will let you do what you want to do.
The only thing that can keep a corporation from becoming totally evil is the consumers. The boardroom is an incubator for evil. If you want to keep a company from doing bad, you have to be a strategic consumer.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I have a few years old Samsung TV and it plays near anything over DLNA (stream over TCP/IP from your PC), though you have to do some searching to find the right DLNA server and setup. Serviio works best for me. Buffering at movie start may be one or two seconds but certainly not more if you're on a wired (!) connection. Over Wi-Fi it's crap, of course.
Last year I connected Samsung Blu-Ray player which supported even more formats and worked even better (faster). Now, DLNA is about as shitty a protocol as possible (really, if you get down to the tech nitty gritty, "frackin' terrible" would be a compliment) so not everything always works and codec support has some limits, but some brands (including Samsung) support some non-standard stuff like additional codecs and even SRT subtitle support. Ultimately, I hacked my BR player with "SamyGO" which allows you to use network shares directly instead of DLNA which made it even better.
I've used laptops for this purpose and have even built HTPCs, but if you take a little care about what you download, by far most things will play on a DLNA setup on modern TVs and BR players (support differs per brand). My PC is usually turned on in my office room, I download my shows and movies (usually x264 720p or 1080p in mkv format with optional srt) and play them back in the living room without any additional gadgets at all.
Then again, maybe none of your TV room playback devices support DLNA or your computer isn't always-on, both will ruin this setup :)
I have never had a Chinese product magically lose features after i bought it. Its pretty sad, and ironic, when you have to go to Communist china to get products that support your freedom..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I've heard decent things about the Western Digital TV Live boxes. For people that like to play with their tech, the Pivos Xios DS can be reflashed with a factory supported XBMC load. (Still basically beta, but reasonably stable.) This is a little ARM box that comes stock running Android, that has full sized USB ports, microSD slot, ethernet/WiFi, etc. I have one of these boxes, I use it for playing local media. I also have a Roku that gets used mostly for Netflix.
I played with a Raspberry Pi running XBMC...it worked, but the menus were a bit sluggish. The Xios is quite a bit quicker at navigating the menus.
There seems to be a lot of raking Google over the coals ... but the only thing we have here is a single report, approved to the slashdot front page by timothy.
At this point, since not a single person has confirmed it on here, I'm inclined to believe there is no such breakage and this is just another example of timothy approving something stupid that he shouldn't be allowed to even read, let alone approve.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Can anyone confirm this breaks playback from local servers along with direct from android devices?
Right now, Im playing an .mp4 located on my NAS, opened from my mac and streaming to my Chromecast via Chrome tab. So what did this break?
Good-bye
Wont happen, Apple is still a hardware company. There are some updates coming to Apple TV to allow guests to use it to screen mirror too.
Good-bye
The only reason for buying a ChromeCast
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.
Read Koush's actual post - the update breaks his Cast app for Android, which works around the app whitelisting to stream directly. Nothing says anywhere that casting arbitrary content from Chrome tabs is broken.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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
Hmm, semi-open $35 dongle from Google, vs 100% proprietary $200 box from Microsoft. Is that really a choice?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
But I've only seen one post saying that they should be sued because the sold a gadget with and advertised feature that they broke after the purchase. So I think that Google is still being let off easy.
That said, perhaps the circumstances were different, and certainly the time-lapse is different. Probably a lot fewer posters bought Goiogle's gadget because of the feature. (And, honestly, to me it's a lot murkier exactly what Google did. Perhaps that will clear up in a couple of days.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It's called an HDMI cable from my computer to my TV. Cheap, simple, and reliable.
I don't respond to AC's.
An upgrade is not always an upgrade.
This solution bypasses Google's Chromecast SDK entirely.
yeah but VLC for android is not yet ready for market. the audio is never in sync with the video. practically any other android video player is better than VLC.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
I have found that who ever designed DNLA was a complete idiot. Some people prefer having the option of smb,nfs,afp. Plus decoding options. Having to reencode a bunch of video files just sucks. Of course its all about the right device for the right situation or person.
While this does make me consider canceling my order, it will probably be a short while before some dev over at XDA comes out with a fully custom rom that solves all the issues, and probably gives us even more usability than stock. Perhaps it's already been done, I haven't looked.
i can stream content from win 7 to sony bravia simply by pressing play to>bravia. so what eaxactly am i missing in this conversation?
You don't remember Apple pushing an iPod update which broke Reals music store purchases? Real found a way to make their DRMed stuff work on iPods, and almost immediately Apple pushed an update which did nothing other than disable Reals stuff.
This is why I got the Raspberry Pi. By not coming with any software, you know that by that nature you are pretty much free to do what you want. On the other hand there are other equivalent Android devices coming on to the market, so it will simply be a question of waiting a little and seeing which device comes with the best terms and user experience.
In the end, what really is frustrating about Google is that they push then open angle, and then you feel shafted when they take away that feature. It just seems like bait and switch. If they were open with their real intentions, then people wouldn't be so annoyed.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
You must be disappointed a lot.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I have a Chromecast, as well as a Roku and an Apple TV. The Chromecast's video quality is terrible by comparison, pausing and stuttering, buffering and rendering video quality from the 1990s. Hopefully one of these updates will make it actually do what it's designed for. Right now it's a $35 device that serves no purpose.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Companies have one main goal, to make money. If you're looking for something free ask the government.
While content owners have a right to determine who has access to their content, choosing where in my home is a step too far.
Then instead of major well-known commercial video providers, subscribe to video providers that don't exercise this right that you claim is a step too far.
Google never said you could stream local content
Say my brother is in a band. How should I play this band's music? Besides, Google never explicitly said that users of Android phones could do specific things with the phones that apps eventually enabled.
All they've done is change an undocumented, unsupported API
And replaced it with which documented, supported API? If none, then the fact that Google has taken explicit effort to ensure that the answer is none reveals something about Google's plans for this device that would make a lot of people have skipped buying the device.
yes they did advertise it playing local content. it is supposed to be able to mirror your browser window. that was a n advetised feature. Many reviews talked about how badly that feature sucked infact.
I bought a chromebook and was a little shocked to find that a network computer won't mount any local network disks! there's no way to do it in chrome at all. There's also no way to stream local media to a chromebook and have it play while it is streaming.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I bought one right after the initial announcement, as soon as they went on sale. I bought it for the only two announced features- direct streaming from the cloud for Netflix, Play, and Youtube, as well as the ability to Tab-cast other things like HBO-Go. The 'Allcast' features that Koush demonstrated only made it better. So, I ordered another for my main room, where I currently have a Logitech Revue GoogleTV. The Revue falls short in local video playback, so I was hoping to replace it with the Chromecast. With the removal of local video playback capability, I've cancelled my order, and will once again look for a solution from other platforms.
Yes Real found a way to trick the iPod into thinking their DRM format was FairPlay. Apple update their firmware to prevent the hack. And? Tricking your competitor's product to support yours isn't really a good move.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
the marketing department taketh away.
As someone once said, "nobody ever woke up in the morning wishing for *less* functionality from their devices.*
I was considering of getting one of those, thinking of all the cool things I could do with it. Now, there's no point.
we don't need such opinionated flamebait to be rated +5 insightful
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
First off you are right. But on the other hand DNLA completely sucks. I'm not sure if it's the DNLA protocol that sucks or the boxes that suck but they are slow and clumsy to use. The DNLA servers seem to use a lot of computer resources. What one would like is to screw DNLA and use an existing protocol like say file serving off of a NAS. I think DNLA was an attempt to roll up transcoding and file serving into one entity and it does neither well; I'm surprised it doesn't try to do e-mail as well.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well, don't leave us hanging! Which one is which?
Clearly Google+Microsoft - folks who were wondering what the was missing in the Google+(...) equation now know. Microsoft's mountain view campus is right next to Google's and they both have "sharing plans" that involve your private data and the government.
Clearly a merger signal.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
...now it's just like every other greedy corporation. Sell you something then restrict its features AFTER you've bought it. Like buying a car, and then the manufacturer stealing a wheel in the middle of the night. "Yeah, it still works, just now not as good as when we first sold it to you." I'll stick with my Roku.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
hearing that this is proof that Ballmer was sacrificing virgin children to Satan.
You mean he's not doing this?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
There are other ways to stream local content which still work fine, like tab casting from Chrome.
I want to tab cast on my Nexus 7. Does tab casting work in Google Chrome for Android yet?
For example, if I decide to boycott my cell provider, I can either forsake cellular service altogether
People survived before cellular service was avoidable, but that's becoming more difficult with pay phones disappearing. I limit my exposure to cellular evil by buying a $100 per year voice-only plan and using it only for occasional calls to arrange rides and the like.
ADB was physically the same connector as S-Video. It's just that the signaling was highly proprietary, though its PWM protocol was vaguely similar to the N64, GameCube, and 1-Wire protocols that followed it.
Proprietary connectors: that was true with ADB. Since the iMac the only somewhat proprietary connector left is FireWire which is a IEEE 1394a/b standard. USB is standard. Ethernet is standard. MiniDSP is a VESA standard.
iPod (30 pin), MagSafe, and Lightning are all proprietary connectors.
Please tell which companies were offering non-DRM online music legally before Apple.
There was the original MP3.com, a place for indie artists to post MP3s and sell burn-on-demand CDs.
Let me rephrase: Someone who has a server agent that supports SMB protocol wants a set-top box that supports SMB protocol.
So what computer do you recommend that runs cool and quiet (not a "space heater" as mentioned here), has an attractive case (not a Big Honkin' Tower that the spouse objects to), comes pre-built (not as a kit that takes an hour or two to assemble, that requires ESD precautions, and whose OS is sold separately), and costs less than 400 USD (compare to the forthcoming PS4)?
It's mainly the convenience of playing it on TV but controlling it fully from my phone with a touchscreen (e.g. to easily rewind to a specific location, or to look up what I want to watch in an online catalog).
Then I guess Chromecast isn't for people who happen to live in areas where the best available Internet access is billed by the GB.
Yes because all laptops have had universal connectors. No wait. They don't.
Every Windows or GNU/Linux laptop that I've owned has had a more or less standard barrel connector. Apple, on the other hand, has declined to license the MagSafe connector and instead gone to court against companies that bought genuine connectors, cut them off, and soldered them onto another PSU.
Yes where the original copyright content holds (and not the 4 major labels) allowed DRM free music.
My point is that if the major labels insist on DRM, one valid option is to ditch the major labels.
So you're cheap, lazy, superficial (you could always hide the case and run an IR repeater) and for some reason cant do any of the research yourself.
This describes the general public well.
so show some level of intelligence and at least make an attempt to come up with a solution on your own
I myself can come up with a solution; I just lack the business experience to bring my solution to market. I have listed some principles for an attractive HTPC. But the majority of the general public can't come up with a solution, as evidenced by twistedsymphony's comment among others listed here. Economies of scale tend to favor the general public, which may be part of why major manufacturers haven't engineered products based on these principles and brought them to market.