I will probably be picking up one of these too. I have always found it odd that with an HDMI dongle type of device you have
to power it with USB. You would think it would be built in to the standard.
I don't think the HDMI people imagined such a thing. HDMI is 10 years old, and designed in 2002. It was a digital AV interconnect standard. There was no such thing as an "HDMI dongle"Here's a somewhat relevant article from 2006 http://www.cepro.com/article/hdmi_corner_power_on_the_buss/K330
The chrome cast ad is great! On par with Apple ads. How does this work with iOS? If all I care about is airplay-ing video to my TV--and not buying movies on iTunes -- is this a better product than AppleTV?
I've read that if your TV has HDMI 1.4 it can provide enough power directly.AppleTV does push from a device through AirPlay (1) with an already encoded stream stored on the decice, sent directly; or (2) with on-the-fly encoding, i.e. mirroring. It can also (3) pull content from the cloud -- iTunes, Netflix, MLB, etc.Chromecast clearly does #3. It will also enable (3a) your device to 'cast' the URL of any (supported) content you're watching. So you're watching YouTube on your phone, you hit the button and it will start pulling that content, perhaps even continuing where you left off.It will do #2, but only for the content of a tab in the Chrome browser. That requires a Chrome browser extension and currently beta. No indication it supports mode #1.
I'd like to go on record noting that the Google Play website is a steaming pile of junk. First of all you can't tell right away that the new tablets can't actually be ordered yet and once something is ordered there is no cancelling it. Amazon is set to deliver my Chromecast today and Google might not even ship till friday, so i tried to cancel that and it just generates an error.
You can tell that customer service is not in their DNA.
Ok, thanks. Ken verifies whate I read and Ars and DF, that its more a sharing of URL from mobile to dongle. It isn't a stream-to-TV device. I see the use, and this would suit me for a lot of my youtubery. I'll keep it in mind. But it's not a must get miracle product.
Quick Review: It's cheap.
Long Review: It's cheap and it shows.
Sam, did you want to write this up for HTF later, or should I start taking pictures and do it up? Maybe both of us put in point/counterpoint because I'd love to know what you think..