The Original Chromecast Hits End of Life After a Decade of Service (arstechnica.com) 41
Rest now, little Chromecast. Google has announced the decade-old Chromecast 1 is finally hitting end of life. From a report: A message on Google's Chromecast firmware support page announced the wind-down of support, saying, "Support for Chromecast (1st gen) has ended, which means these devices no longer receive software or security updates, and Google does not provide technical support for them. Users may notice a degradation in performance." The 1st-gen Chromecast launched in 2013 for $35.
The original Chromecast was wildly successful and sold 10 million units in 2014 alone. For years, the device was mentioned in Google earnings calls as the highlight of the company's hardware efforts, and it was essentially the company's first successful piece of hardware. The Chromecast made it easy to beam Internet videos to your TV at a time when that was otherwise pretty complicated.
The original Chromecast was wildly successful and sold 10 million units in 2014 alone. For years, the device was mentioned in Google earnings calls as the highlight of the company's hardware efforts, and it was essentially the company's first successful piece of hardware. The Chromecast made it easy to beam Internet videos to your TV at a time when that was otherwise pretty complicated.
Why? (Score:2)
Did streaming Tik Tok to your TV become harder?
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Chromecast != Chromebook
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Users may notice a degradation in performance (Score:2)
The performance of the hardware will remain unchanged. And if updates to the applications aren't available (or installed, if available), the system performance will remain the same.
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For hardware running offline tasks on relatively offline data, sure.
However, things get trickier when you bring in, say, streaming videos from the internet into the picture.
For example, the first gen ChromeCast *only* supported H264 and VP8 in hardware. So if a critical mass of streaming services said they were only bothering to provide HEVC or AV1 moving forward, then the device would be useless.
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The video I think does get "cast" from your phone, it's not really a standalone streaming device. That's sort of what made the chromecast a thing compared to standalone hardware at the time like Roku or Apple TV. And the phone is likely not sending the entire video image uncompressed frame by frame to the chromecast but has its own codecs and compression.
I also found this the most annoying thing about Chromecast when I was given one by a friend - you had to ue your phone for everything, including pausing,
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All the phone does is control the Chromecast. You could start a video playing from say Netflix, then turn your phone off and the Chromecast would carry on playing it.
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The Chromecast was simply directed by the phone to stream from the streaming provider, except as a screen mirroring mode. You can tell because the screen mirroring mode sucks, and the Chromecast apps didn't.
The eventually did offer a remote so you could skip the phone, but it's not as good as Roku at its worst, and Roku has even better remotes now. It's amazing how Google can't even compete with Roku after several attempts. The only thing that Chromecast has going for it is the ability for you to 'google a
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Because there will likely be newer codecs, wifi formats, etc.
And more ads, don't forget that, my ipad has been steadily getting slower ever year because of ads and the scripts that run them.
and so...? (Score:2)
My TV is "dumb," i.e. I do not connect it to a LAN, let alone the internet. What risks, if any, do I incur by continuing to use my Gen1 Chromecast to receive streams from VLC playing videos on my laptop?
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I think the only risks are that it may not be powerful enough to play some of the new codex. It doesn't sound like they are disabling it.
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Chromecast Risk (Score:3)
I faced a similar question in 2018, when (against my better judgement) I bought a Chromecast Audio. The way I used it was that mpd output to a stream, and whenever HomeAssistant saw mpd play something, it told the Chromecast to stream from mpd. It was mostly reliable. Mostly. But I eventually ended up replacing the Chromecast Audio with a "real computer" which avoided the aforementi
Uh, what's that again? (Score:3)
"The Chromecast made it easy to beam Internet videos to your TV at a time when that was otherwise pretty complicated."
The Apple TV predates the Chromecast by six or seven years, and it was never complicated to use. And AirPlay (originally AirTunes) predates it by ten years.
Re:Uh, what's that again? (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong but Apple TV doesn't let you send what is playing on your phone to your TV screen.
Also it didn't cost $35.
The point of Chromecast was to be the cheapest possible way to open your dumb TV up to every video app on your phone, with no need to worry about developers adding special support for it.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but Apple TV doesn't let you send what is playing on your phone to your TV screen.
You're wrong. Airplay + Apple TV does exactly that for your phone, your iPad, and/or your Mac computer.
And there are third-party hacks that let this work for a Windows computer as well.
Also it didn't cost $35.
The cost was not part of the statement at all. The claim was this was a complicated process until the Chromecast came along - which is incorrect.
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To be fair, my Samsung Tv supports airplay but not Chromecast... But it's all a licensing issue at the end of the day...
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The Chromecast really only had an advantage in the price department until Amazon released the Fire Stick. Amazon practically gives those things away when they go on sale.
Also, Roku predates the Chromecast by a few years, too.
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Chromcasts are, on purpose, very dumb and cheap. The phone tells them what to show.
Apple TV is more like Android TV: a whole computer running an OS and apps and all that.
Chromecast is great, because it makes a dumb (or wannabe smart) TV usable in a quick, easy and cheap way.
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But then Roku also introduced a stick that was roughly in a similar price range, with limited capability compared to the standard Roku box at the time.
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Apple TV was kind of semi-abandoned by Apple for some time until streaming took off. I knew the VP who was in charge of it and heard from some of his workers that he was dubious about the product; also he was dubious about the iphone as well...
I knew that. (Score:2)
Are any of them still working? (Score:2)
We had to replace our original Chromecast once when it just stopped working and again several years ago when it became flaky and would not reliably stream video without being restarted immediately before use (i.e. you could not leave it connected for a day or two and then use it). The newer ones are a lot more reliable.
In an ideal world the widget would work for longer, but given my experience, I think that Google ending support for it after 10 years may not be cutting off that many still-working devices.
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Still have 2 originals and a gen2. All working great. We use all 3 daily and they are powered at least at least every day. One of them stays on all the time (the TV usb port is 24x7 powered).
"first successful piece of hardware" (Score:1)
The first successful piece of hardware after millions of servers and switch ports worth of networking gear that was the platform for the whole company.
But sure, let's go with "first".
So? (Score:2)
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Nope. At the time, almost no one has 4K TVs. I still don't, I don't see the need, my eyes can't make it out, and I suspect a lot of people who brag about how great it is can't see the different from across the room anyway. For a computer monitor though 4K is fine since you're sitting closer and are reading text that would just be a blur from the sofa.
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Grandpa's AM tube receiver still works (Score:2)
JUST SAY NO to "planned obsolescence."
Analog-broadcast non-stereo AM radio is still used in many countries for domestic commercial broadcasting, and it still works with receivers made over a century ago.
Not sound like an old coot (Score:2)
But time was when you could buy a television and it would keep receiving television pictures for 60, 70 years. These days you buy a stick to put in your TV and it stops working before your kid reaches middle school.
Chromecast Audio (Score:1)
I don't expect it will be EOL, because there is really nothing it does but stream an audio signal, but one day it is just going to fizzle out.