Original Chromecast lives: Devices back on after mysteriously breaking this week
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I've also noticed the casting button disappeared from YouTube and only appears once a video is actually playing. I suspect Google would prefer it if we used something that shoved more advertising at us .
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first thing that came to mind, lmao. the number of devices with absolutely zero consideration for how the cert will get refreshed is astonishing. embedded SSL stacks tend to be a complete pain in the ass to deal with, but it's still no excuse for not at least thinking about it in the product stage. (just as likely someone DID think about it and it got pushed off and pushed off until the first gen product was EoL'd, though...)
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Resistance
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
As much as google killing off products is a meme, when it comes to hardware, their record is at least par with the industry or better. Nest thermostats are a blemish. Stadia controllers are a bright point. With support for a cheap device like this exceeding a decade, I'm impressed.
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Why does any device other than the chromecast and the casting device need to be involved? I always assumed, given they are on the same network or in the same room, they could find each other and share the video without any other devices being involved.
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Why should a device literally ever cease to be able to do the function it could do when it rolled off the production line, barring hardware failure?
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YetAnotherAnonymousAppellation
Ars Praefectus
It shouldn't, but all you have to do is look back on the Y2K crisis to see that failure to look far enough ahead is always a problem.
BTW, everyone ready for 2038?
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Because that's not how CCs work. You're not streaming from the controlling device to the CC. You're essentially giving the CC a link to media and the CC streams the content directly.
E: forgot a word
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And this always struck me as a elegant, efficient solution: the video stream gets from the remote service that has it, to the display adapter that needs it - why should it tunnel through my phone to the CC using double the bandwidth on my network?
(I'll note this is about the only visible instance of elegance or efficiency I can think of in the last 20 years - thinking of things like streaming music that by default always refetches the same stuff I play)
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I'm glad my ChromeCast Audios still work. I'm dreading the day I have to figure out a replacement for them to keep all my old amps around the house playing the same thing in sync.
At first I thought this report would include them as they are the first and only generation of their style of CC.
At first I thought this report would include them as they are the first and only generation of their style of CC.
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There's quite a collection of music streamers that support multiple platforms and multiroom audio that could replace a Chromecast Audio, while also offering more functionality:
- https://www.wiimhome.com/wiimmini/overview
- https://www.arylic.com/products/s10-wireless-preamplifier
- https://www.evehome.com/en-us/eve-play
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And to the OP's situation, I'm pretty sure the WIIM stuff support the actual ChromeCast Audio protocol too, so they could conceivable replace failing units one at a time is needed without shifting to a whole new system.
(assumes that the apps they use continue to support the ChromeCast protocol of course).
As a weirdo that loves the functionality of Squeezebox/now-Lyrion server, I expecting WIIM gear for this sort of migration by attrition - the wide range of protocols seems like good future proofing.
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The first gen Chromecast is peak Google for me.
Both in the sense that I think it was a singularly good device, and that Google has steadily decayed from roughly that point.
My personal perspective on that latter is based on gradually converting all my home infrastructure over to Google. Chromecasts, Android , Google TVs, Google homes, nests, etc.
The more I homogenized on Google, the worse it worked. I've been moving away the past two years and it's nice to see it improve.
But the Chromecast itself was amazing. Super cheap, had some nice travel uses, and popularized the idea that your phone could control media on other devices. I think with a couple tweaks and better marketing they could have sold plenty more.
Both in the sense that I think it was a singularly good device, and that Google has steadily decayed from roughly that point.
My personal perspective on that latter is based on gradually converting all my home infrastructure over to Google. Chromecasts, Android , Google TVs, Google homes, nests, etc.
The more I homogenized on Google, the worse it worked. I've been moving away the past two years and it's nice to see it improve.
But the Chromecast itself was amazing. Super cheap, had some nice travel uses, and popularized the idea that your phone could control media on other devices. I think with a couple tweaks and better marketing they could have sold plenty more.
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But why can't the CC have its own server that can be paired with your device and receive those links directly from it? Why does it HAVE to go through Google's servers?
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WiiM products support Chromecast audio (called Google Cast in WiiM): https://faq.wiimhome.com/en/support...-enable-or-disable-google-cast-on-wiim-device
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That depends if you consider "be secure" as a function. This is a device that needs access to the internet.
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eduardopozo56
Ars Centurion
Yeah. Its also way harder to go into "audio only" mode.
Before you could just turn off your cellphone screen and it would continue playing, no problems. Now you have to "minimize" the video (to PiP) and then click on the audio icon, and even then, sometimes it doesnt work.
They are trying very hard to force poeple to have their screen on, playing the video, even for premium subscribers who already don't get ads (at least not direct ads). But with more and more ads "embedded" in the content, they want to force us to watch, not only listen
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eduardopozo56
Ars Centurion
Because thats how it was made, thats how it was marketed, and thats how it has always worked?
There are plenty other devices that do what you describe, but that was never the Chromecast.
"Why cant my car fly? Why it needs to be on the road?"
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Because how else is Google going to complete their profile of you by getting a record of everything you've ever cast?
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Still using a Squeezebox Radio. Loving the open, community firmware and server. How is it my Squeezebox works 15 years later and nothing else that old still does?
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They have my sympathy... I don't have one of those, but I, too, find it satisfying to squeeze the very last drop of usefulness out of my IT equipment. I'm typing this on a 2014 iPad mini. I've encountered some challenges to continue to use it for this forum and for watching Youtube (the only two things I use it for, basically), but the annoyances remain acceptable, and I'll keep on trucking until I run out of workarounds and acceptible compromises.
The laptop is late 2017. Taking the "workstation" path to upgrade during its lifetime. Was lucky enough to cheaply max it out to 64GB last summer, and thanks to thunderbolt could put eGPU to use. It's plugged into a classic dock that I kept from previous laptop. Dated 2010. Acts up from time to time such that Ilose my 2nd screen, but as long as I don't touch it, it's mostly fine, lol. And that second screen, rotated 90°, is a rather expensive 21" NEC Multisync that cost me around €900 back in 2009. Main 27" monitor is getting to 8 years of service, as well.
Whenever each of these give the impression that they have finally given up (happened a couple of times), I feel genuinely BAD about the idea. And when I resurrect them (like by hard resetting the iPad mini a couple of times now), my day just feels GOOD.
I suppose this mindset is going to spread wider, with how consumer hardware is evolving.
The laptop is late 2017. Taking the "workstation" path to upgrade during its lifetime. Was lucky enough to cheaply max it out to 64GB last summer, and thanks to thunderbolt could put eGPU to use. It's plugged into a classic dock that I kept from previous laptop. Dated 2010. Acts up from time to time such that Ilose my 2nd screen, but as long as I don't touch it, it's mostly fine, lol. And that second screen, rotated 90°, is a rather expensive 21" NEC Multisync that cost me around €900 back in 2009. Main 27" monitor is getting to 8 years of service, as well.
Whenever each of these give the impression that they have finally given up (happened a couple of times), I feel genuinely BAD about the idea. And when I resurrect them (like by hard resetting the iPad mini a couple of times now), my day just feels GOOD.
I suppose this mindset is going to spread wider, with how consumer hardware is evolving.
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Modern WIFI routers can be (and sometimes default to) a mode where devices on the same network can only communicate out to the internet and not each other. This adds more security to a network where a compromised device on the network cannot try to spread to or hack into other devices on the same network.
In general this makes it easier (for "consumer" oriented tech) to rely on a public internet intermediary for cases where 2 devices need to communicate with each other. It has the added benefit of allowing the 2 devices to communicate even when they are not on the same network.
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We have an early Chromecast device. I guess it's first generation. What I like about it is the very fact that it has no UI, no ads, and no remote control. Bring something up on my phone; "cast" it to my TV. So simple. I really, really, don't need another remote control, another UI, and more commercials. Given the direction the industry has been going I will probably keep it and my aging TV for as long as they keep working.
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This is also not how Chromecasts works. You don't reach out to Google to control a Chromecast. If that was the case, how would you discover Chromecasts on the network you were on that weren't set up by you, for example?
Chromecasts use mDNS to advertise themselves on a network. The m in mDNS stands for multicast and relies on IP multicasting. Devices looking for a Chromecast target see these multicast messages and build a list of available Chromecasts. You do have to be on the same network as a Chromecast to discover it. I have a pretty segregated network and I have to run a service to forward multicast traffic between subnets to allow devices on one subnet discover and cast to CCs on another.
The issue here was very likely a TLS cert issue. It's unfortunate, but in a way it's not a bad thing. Chromecasts enforce encryption between themselves and the server hosting the data (and the "app" that runs the stream). That requires verifying certificates, and CAs need updated periodically. It's a pretty common fuck-up to forget these updates.
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Given that my two 2nd gen Chromecasts both still work perfectly, get security updates and fulfil my casting needs, exactly why is it "time for me to move on"?
Well, I suppose that e-waste pile in the landfill won't grow itself. If I don't do my duty as a good consumer, and trash everything periodically the economy will surely collapse.
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I found my old Chromecast in a box a few weeks ago. I thought the whole series of Chromecasts were deprecated years ago. It was neat in its time, but as I recall, it got stupid kind of fast, so we stopped using it.
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Why should any device or tool work perpetually?
More to the point, all software-driven devices are doomed, because humans don’t know how to write perfectly maintainable software on any time scale resembling the resilience of hardware engineering.
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