Tag: roku

I love my Chromecast with Netflix

chromecast

I’ve been using my chromecast now for a few weeks and the thing has some great potential.  Right now, one can send (sling?) anything in a chrome tab to the dongle.  To take advantage of chromecast on a phone one needs to use Youtube or Netflix.  I don’t use youtube very much but Netflix is used several times a day.  I love being able to click the chromecast button on my phone and then click play and it appears on my TV!  Roku is still my favorite way to watch Netflix but I don’t have a roku box on all my tvs.

 

 

 

 

Here are the three things on my wish list.

  1. To be able to use it in a hotel.  Currently, the chromecast relies on wifi to work.  It works great when both the chromecast and the phone are on the same network but in a hotel your devices are not technically on the same network.  Each connection is it’s own “network.”  The other problem is the chromecast doesn’t support the login pages that almost every hotel uses these days.
  2. I would like to be able to send anything over the chromecast.  I had a DVD here that I wanted to watch on my TV from my computer but I wasn’t able to play the DVD in a chrome tab.  Therefore, no luck!
  3. Netflix tweaks
    1. A fast forward button for Netflix!  There is a 10 second rewind button but no fast forward button?
    2. When my phone rings it is very difficult to get out off the chromecast screen to answer it.  This may be more my phone but I have no way to verify this.

 

For $35 everyone should have one of these.  One of my concerns was the USB charging but even my old HD TV had a USB port on it.  I read that HDMI 1.4 will charge it but I don’t have any TV’s that have that version of HDMI.  I think this is just the opening salvo for Google in the war for the living room.  It should have been the Google TV’s but they missed their mark.  This is a very cheap instrument that has the potential to do even more.

Streaming from Western Digital Live to Roku – Not easy

I am going to make this very short: My Western Digital Live will not stream to the Roku without a ton of work. There seems to be only two ways to do this.

The first way is to update Twonky and pay the $20 to get it to version 7.x. This requires a person to be comfortable with Linux – which I am but most people are not. This first way still would not work for me. I could never get my WD Live to show on the my.twonky.com website thus making it useless. I could see my desktop which I also installed twonky on but several of my movie encodes would not play. Not sure how this is possible since I always use the same settings.

The second way is to install apache or Lttpd(sp?) on the Live. I have not done this. After wasting a few hours on this I am through trying to make it work. I guess I will be copying the movies to a flash drive to play them on the roku.