Chromecast Now Open To Developers With the Google Cast SDK

sfcrazy writes "Google has finally released the SDK for Chromecast which will allow 3rd party developers to stream content to the living room via Chromecast. When Google broke Koushik Dutta's (CyanogenMOD fame) app, it was met with criticism. However it was assumed that Google was positioning Chromecast as a streaming device and was focusing on getting content providers for it before it engaged developers to add support for their apps. Now that Google has succeeded in getting a long list of content providers to bring their content on Chromecast, the company is opening the device to developers."

Comments

More HDMI dongle devices coming

[the_scoots]

We've been playing with a number of yet to be announced similar pieces of HDMI hardware at work, as well as Chromecast. The #1 feature I wish was available is to make multiple dongles stackable on one HDMI port.

Re:More HDMI dongle devices coming

[Sunshinerat]

Different devices on a hotel guest wifi network are not supposed to see each other (and a hotel room wifi login on a ChromeCast dongle seems difficult - to say the least).
ChromeCast in a hotel would be my critical application. Plug it into the Hotel TV, tie it my tablet to it and play local movies or HBO Go.

The best way to solve that would be a direct connection between the dongle and the tablet, not going through the router.
Unless this is fixed by now, I have need to hold out as I have other (better?) means of playing various sources of video at home.

Maybe a third party solution would fix this, however, will it be supported by the third parties like HBO?

Re:More HDMI dongle devices coming

[mythosaz]

This is exactly the problem in my living room. While I've got multiple HDMI inputs, only my XBox One works in series with another device -- and since the XBox One doesn't act as a Media Center Extender (you bastards!), right now that device is my TV input.

The Chromecast is on another HDMI input, and is mostly relegated to the world of "this odd toy I bought."

Re:More HDMI dongle devices coming

[Belial6]

I just got am email from Roku. Apparently they have partnered with a couple of different TV manufacturers, and that models will be releases this year with Roku as the TV's UI. Part of that is making the different inputs act as Roku channels.

Re:More HDMI dongle devices coming

[nblender]

Yeah; I'd seen that it was available in the play store. I'm afraid that it will work as poorly as RaspPlex... If it works well then it would be terrific.

Re:More HDMI dongle devices coming

[Shemmie]

I used Plex and Chromecast all over Christmas. It streamed very well indeed. It'd occasionally crash (as in the movie would stop playing suddenly), but it'd usually remember where the movie got to, and pick up where it left off - and I never needed to restart the media server.

All in all, very impressed with how Plex and Chromecast play together - mixture of file formats / quality were attempted, and all played at first time of asking.

As a by the by, I'm British, and got mine via the grey-market; if you're considering it, I can highly recommend it. All I need now is an UltraViolet player for Flixster, which will hopefully come with the SDK out, and my movie needs are completely sorted.

Re:More HDMI dongle devices coming

[gmhowell]

Sometimes, quantity is a kind of quality.

About damn time!

[heezer7]

I bought 2 of this with a project in mind and have been stuck waiting...

New ChomeCast Device ?

[psergiu]

Hope Google releases a better ChromeCast device - with an Ethernet port and support for accepting HDMI-CEC events from the TV so you can use the TV remote to Play/Pause/FF/RW.
The current one is sucky.
And if you are on a metered internet connection, beware: While plugged in, the current ChromeCast pulls lots of large photos to display as the screensaver slideshow. It would be nice if it could be pointed to a local network share to display a slideshow with your own photos.

Re:New ChomeCast Device ?

[bobbied]

. And if you are on a metered internet connection, beware: While plugged in, the current ChromeCast pulls lots of large photos to display as the screensaver slideshow. It would be nice if it could be pointed to a local network share to display a slideshow with your own photos.

I think you have your first app idea....

Re:New ChomeCast Device ?

[prehistoricman5]

Support for HDMI-CEC events would actually solve the problem of the display updating; it would know when the tv is powered off or it ceased to be the active source and could disable updating the background until it becomes the active source again.

Holy crap that's some bad writing.

[fang0654]

It was written as if someone pushed it through Google translate, deleted some random characters, printed it out, ate it, and crapped it onto a keyboard. I do hope we get some badass apps for the Chromecast though. It has a lot of potential.

Re:Can someone fill me in?

[mcl630]

Koushik Dutta wrote an app called AllCast to cast videos stored locally on an Android device to Chromecast by reverse-engineering the (then closed) APIs. Google then changed the APIs to break his app. Koushnik then changed AllCast to cast to anything but Chromecast (Roku, AppleTV, Google TV, Samsung TVs, etc). Now that the Chromecast APIs are available to everyone, he will update AllCast to support Chromecast again.

Re:Everybody drinking the Google-Aid now?

[symbolset]

Between Android and iOS a developer has 94% of mobile devices covered. Mobile developers have never had it this good.

Lying with statistics about market share

[tepples]

Android has the market share.

Of what? One can pick a market to give anything you want "the market share". For example, among makers of phones that can play Amazon streaming video, Apple has 100% market share.

How is Chromecast better than this?

[darkNeko]

Recently found an indiegogo project that seems to be better than anything chromecast has been able to pull so far. Here for the campaign (already ended) There for the site. I'm not affiliated in any way with them, just seems a cooler idea, and open source to boot.

Why?

[sexconker]

How is any of this shit any better than simply using an HDMI cable?

The tiny benefit of it being wireless pales in comparison to the compatibility issues and added cost. With an HDMI cable I can display whateverthefuck on whateverthefuck, With an HDMI cable I can get proper surround sound, a full quality stream, having my remote work through CEC, having ethernet piped down the HDMI, etc. etc. etc.

Re:What does this mean to me?

[khellendros1984]

I don't know; it depends on who you are. Are you a developer that would like to be able to stream audio and video to a television or other HDMI-equipped device? Then this is an API that will allow you to do so, provided the user has a device called a "Chromecast".

Are you an owner of the aforementioned Chromecast device? Then you should be interested that with an API available, more developers can implement Chromecast apps, and you'll be able to stream a greater variety of content to your TV.

If you're neither, and you've never heard of a "Chromecast" before, then you can still get some information from the summary. First, that it's a Google device for streaming things "to the living room", second, that it requires app-specific support to work, and third, that Google has now released an API for the device that will allow developers to provide Chromecast streaming support in their apps.