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."

Comments

Well that's that

[dorfed]

Why am I not surprised Google?

Re:Well that's that

[Anonymous Coward]

Why am I not surprised Google?

Because removing features from already purchased hardware seems to OK with manufacturers. If they aren't getting something extra from you using it for your own purposes then they'll take that away from you. Bless their hearts.

Re:Well that's that

[Anonymous Coward]

no.. it's that there's a chance you won't buy, rent, or subscribe to any media through their store or one operated by one of their partners.. it's all about the money.. google's money, they don't give a shit about piracy, exactly.. they don't want you playing local content at all, legit or not, when there's perfectly good pay-for media available through the device for which google gets their cut.

Re:Well that's that

[Stumbles]

Oh man and I was just about to pull the trigger on one of those. Am I soooooo glad that did not happen, I would be pissed as hell. Guess what Google; you get zero clams from me.

Re:Well that's that

[aklinux]

I don't remember Google ever advertising the ability to play local content. Allcast essentially reverse engineered their own, undocumented, API. To the best of my knowledge, the device still does everything Google advertises.

Re:Well that's that

[AmiMoJo]

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.

more like

[the_fat_kid]

bad news for Google, who was hoping that I would buy such a thing.

Re:more like

[Scutter]

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.

Re:Bound to happen.

[sd4f]

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.

I was planning to get one...

[sootman]

... 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.

Maybe not completely true?

[ad454]

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.

Re:Too easy...

[oodaloop]

Well, don't leave us hanging! Which one is which?

Apple closed

[tuppe666]

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.

Re:Apple closed

[peragrin]

other companies only went DRM free first because the RIAA let them to break Apple's strangle hold which only partially worked.

The only thing the RIAA and MPAA fear more than pirates, and DRM free music is another company with a stranglehold on their future business relationships with artists. the RIAA and MPAA are the only groups that can threaten to make, break or enslave artists.

I suggest you learn history.

My Smart TV and Blu-Ray players still play media

[BenJeremy]

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).

China version

[nurb432]

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..

Does *not* break casting local content from Chrome

[Namarrgon]

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.

Frothy hysteria is fun

[Nimey]

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:

Warning: The current Google Cast SDK is a preview SDK intended for development and testing purposes only, not for production apps. Google may change this SDK significantly prior to the official release of the Google Cast SDK. We strongly recommend that you do not publicly distribute any application using this preview SDK, as this preview SDK will no longer be supported after the official SDK is released (which will cause applications based only on the preview SDK to break).

Applications using this preview SDK will work only on Chromecast receiver devices that are whitelisted for development. Google will provide whitelisting for Google Cast receivers for development and testing purposes until the final SDK is released. See Whitelisting your receiver.

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...

Re:ctrl+o

[Namarrgon]

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.

Re:ctrl+o

[Nimey]

You mean he worked around the official unstable API and was surprised when it broke?

Unpossible!