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Google ChromeCast : nice but limited (in Belgium, for now)


Last month I was passing through France and had the opportunity to buy a Google Chrome Cast doohicky for 35 euros; since then you can now also buy it in Belgium.

For those not in the know : the Chromecast dongle allows you to ‘cast’ things from your smartphone to your tv. So for example you can show Youtube clips or the latest snaps of your kids on your tv.

Setup is a breeze, really the easiest setup ever for such a complicated interaction of software and hardware – just install the hardware on your tv and install the chromecast app on your smartphone, the app gets you up and running in minutes.

Behind the scenes it must be quite complex: the app disconnects your smartphone from your wireless network, searches for the Chromecast dongle which is on it’s own default network, and asks your wifi password so it can pass it on to the Chromecast, updates it with the latest firmware, reconnects to your network, and it’s working ! I was fairly impressed with the ease of setup.

Once the setup is done, you can start ‘casting’ pictures, home-videos, etc from your smartphone to the chromecast. Each app that can do that has a chromecast icon somewhere that you can tap, and then select your chromecast dongle.

The data you are casting is actually not directly sent to the chromecast, but first goes up to the internet, and then back down to your dongle.

  • Disadvantage : your casted picture/video travels out of your local network, to make a detour on the internet – more distance makes it slower
  • Advantage : Google Movies / Netflix movies / Youtube clips stream at a decent resolution for your smartTV, and probably come ‘directly’ from the Google/Netflix/Youtube servers instead of traveling via your app.

I played around with it for few days, and here is my feedback :

2 replies on “Google ChromeCast : nice but limited (in Belgium, for now)”

Hello I am so delighted I found your webpage, I really found you by mistake,
while I was researching on Aol for something else, Anyhow I am
here now and would just like to say many thanks for a marvelous post and a all round
interesting blog (I also love the theme/design),
I don’t have time to read through it all at the moment but I have
saved it and also included your RSS feeds, so when I have
time I will be back to read more, Please do keep up the great jo.

Hi,

Would you elaborate on this statement?
>”Disadvantage : your casted picture/video travels out of your local network, to make a detour on the internet – more distance makes it slower.”

Did you mean that my personal pictures and films will be sent out of my local network on onto the public Internet?
If so to which server and which company? Would you mind sharing your evidence and backing up your statement? If true we would have privacy concerns.

Kind regards, Soph

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