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.
- 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.
- 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!
- Netflix tweaks
- A fast forward button for Netflix! There is a 10 second rewind button but no fast forward button?
- 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.