Google Breaks ChromeCast's Ability To Play Local Content 329
sfcrazy writes "Bad news for all ChromeCast users who were thinking of being able to stream local content to their HD TVs. Google has pushed an update for ChromeCast which has broken support for third-party apps like AirCast (AllCast) which allow users to 'stream' local files from their devices to ChromeCast connected TV sets."
more like (Score:5, Interesting)
bad news for Google, who was hoping that I would buy such a thing.
I suppose we should all return our chromecasts (Score:3, Interesting)
How wretched and nasty of Google to so suddenly turn to the dark side, and render the hardware useless.
I was planning to get one... (Score:5, Interesting)
... and probably still will, as long as it's able to play any arbitrary content from Chrome. My idea was to drop all my media into a web-servable directory on a small server in my house and use Chrome on my laptop or phone to browse to that directory, then click the "send to chromecast" button to send it to my TV. That should still work, right? Is there anyone here who has one and is using it in that way? It's the only reason I'd get one -- I have no use at all for Yet Another Way to play hulu, netflix, youtube, etc.
Try something more open (Score:3, Interesting)
My raspberry pi and Ouya still play any arbitrary content I throw at them. Take that, Google.
Re:Well that's that (Score:5, Interesting)
no.. it's that there's a chance you won't buy, rent, or subscribe to any media through their store or one operated by one of their partners.. it's all about the money.. google's money, they don't give a shit about piracy, exactly.. they don't want you playing local content at all, legit or not, when there's perfectly good pay-for media available through the device for which google gets their cut.
Not surprised (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this a surprise to anyone? Did anyone really think that once Google had control of hardware and software they'd eventually get around to limiting you to content purchased through them (or one of their partners)?
Don't buy a Chromecast if you want to view media you own or have made yourself. There are other similar devices that will let you do what you want to do.
The only thing that can keep a corporation from becoming totally evil is the consumers. The boardroom is an incubator for evil. If you want to keep a company from doing bad, you have to be a strategic consumer.
ctrl+o (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Well that's that (Score:2, Interesting)
"Don't be EVIL..."
Never, NEVER use anything by these crooks.
Google and the NSA: Who's holding the 'shit-bag' now? [cryptome.org]
by Julian Assange
It has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA for their compliance with the PRISM mass surveillance system.
So just how close is Google to the US securitocracy? Back in 2011 I had a meeting with Eric Schmidt, the then Chairman of Google, who came out to see me with three other people while I was under house arrest. You might suppose that coming to see me was gesture that he and the other big boys at Google were secretly on our side: that they support what we at WikiLeaks are struggling for: justice, government transparency, and privacy for individuals. But that would be a false supposition. Their agenda was much more complex, and as we found out, was inextricable from that of the US State Department. The full transcript of our meeting is available online through the WikiLeaks website.
The pretext for their visit was that Schmidt was then researching a new book, a banal tome which has since come out as The New Digital Age. My less than enthusiastic review of this book was published in the New York Times in late May of this year. On the back of that book are a series of pre-publication endorsements: Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Michael Hayden (former head of the CIA and NSA) and Tony Blair. Inside the book Henry Kissinger appears once again, this time given pride of place in the acknowledgements.
Schmidt's book is not about communicating with the public. He is worth $6.1 billion and does not need to sell books. Rather, this book is a mechanism by which Google seeks to project itself into Washington. It shows Washington that Google can be its partner, its geopolitical visionary, who will help Washington see further about America's interests. And by tying itself to the US state, Google thereby cements its own security, at the expense of all competitors.
Two months after my meeting with Eric Schmidt, WikiLeaks had a legal reason to call Hilary Clinton and to document that we were calling her. It's interesting that if you call the front desk of the State Department and ask for Hillary Clinton, you can actually get pretty close, and we've become quite good at this. Anyone who has seen Doctor Strangelove may remember the fantastic scene when Peter Sellers calls the White House from a payphone on the army base and is put on hold as his call gradually moves through the levels. Well WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison, pretending to be my PA, put through our call to the State Department, and like Peter Sellers we started moving through the levels, and eventually we got up to Hillary Clinton's senior legal advisor, who said that we would be called back.
Shortly afterwards another one of our people, WikiLeaks' ambassador Joseph Farrell, received a call back, not from the State Department, but from Lisa Shields, the then girlfriend of Eric Schmidt, who does not formally work for the US State Department. So let's reprise this situation: The Chairman of Google's girlfriend was being used as a back channel for Hillary Clinton. This is illustrative. It shows that at this level of US society, as in other corporate states, it is all musical chairs.
That visit from Google while I was under house arrest was, as it turns out, an unofficial visit from the State Department. Just consider the people who accompanied Schmidt on that visit: his girlfriend Lisa Shields, Vice President for Communications at the CFR; Scott Malcolmson, former senior State Department advisor; and Jared Cohen, advisor to both Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, a kind of Generation Y Kissinger figure -- a noisy Quiet American as the author Graham Greene might have put it.
Google started out as part of Californian graduate student culture around San Francisco's Bay Area. But as Goo
Re:Well that's that (Score:4, Interesting)
Android TV sticks seem to be a much better proposal than Chromecasts, anyway, especially at the same price. And some of them run Linux. Which is a godsend, because after this, I'm finally starting to get truly wary about Android.
Re:Well that's that (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps its something to do with the fact Google never said you could stream local content.
All they've done is change an undocumented, unsupported API that third parties have been using.