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Comment by steve_adams_86 | Hacker News Reader

Maybe this isn’t a great place to ask, but:

I’m so sick of my chromecast. The audio and video issues are absurd. I have a fibre connection but I can’t manage to keep a 1080p cast working from my machine, and Youtube frequently stutters and lags.

Sometimes I go to Apple’s website and almost buy an Apple TV, other times I think about something more DIY like a raspberry pi media centre.

But what I wonder is... is all of this stuff shit? Do I just stick with my chromecast? Maybe I’m just fooling myself that spending money and switching would be any better.

Reading this just reminded me of how obnoxious my chromecast is.

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I’ve been looking at this for a while and not seen anything better than chromecast :( (For the specific use-case of “streaming from phone / laptop to TV”)

I really wish Kodi had a chromecast-server plugin, as Kodi is way better at everything else in the media-playback realm; but having a single-click button for “take this video I’m viewing on my phone and show it on my TV” is just so convenient that it’s ended up becoming the default way of viewing media in my house.

You can use an adapter to get ethernet to your chromecast. I’ve never run into issues on mine with YouTube at 1080p

I think this adapter is also bundled with the Ultra. Upgrading to that might do the trick.

That's weird. Is your WiFi the issue, maybe? For me, whenever I have issues with the Chromecast, that usually solves the issue.

Are you sure it's the fault of the device ? Could just be your wifi that has intermitten issues

I thought so too, but I’ve cycled through hardware (some of it quite good) and the issues were consistent.

"I think about something more DIY like a raspberry pi"

I've had terrible experiences with Raspberry Pi video playback. Video stutters and lags, I tried both VLC in Raspbian OS and also LibreElec OS. LibreElec OS is a bit better since it loads only what's necessary for Kodi.

I don't recommend it at all.

Chromecast 2nd gen has worked well for me on a 1080p TV. My only complaint is that when idle, it disconnects frequently (once every few hours), but I suspect it's due to my shitty Arris modem.

Every time I have friends or family who are struggling with playback on devices such as these my first question is if they’re on WiFi. Eliminate the WiFi factor and see if you’re still having issues. 9 times out of 10 WiFi is the problem.

There's no wired version of Chromecast to my knowledge

On the Chromecast Ultra the charger doubles as an Ethernet port.

USB ethernet adapters exist for nearly all modern versions of these sticks. Including Roku and Chromecast.

Seems likethere might be an issue with the device itself. I've been using my Chromecast on a shared hospital room connection for weeks and it's been suberb.

Ding ding ding!

Thus is the answer. Some revisions of Chromecast have a slow CPU, and poor thermals so the CPU throttles even slower.

That normally isn't an issue, because all the video decoding is done in hardware, but enqueueing the video data chunks to be played is done by software. If the software is delayed because the CPU is very slow and the same event loop is processing loads of other crap (which it is), the video can glitch every few minutes.

The solution is for Google to do less crap on the main thread, increase the hardware video buffer size, or to get a faster CPU or have a better heatsink. The reason some videos do it while others don't is because the chunking is different sizes for different videos.

The problem is worst on the original v1 Chromecast. The latest software update reduced the clock speed because some devices were overheating and kernel panicking. You can still make the problem almost vanish if you do water cooling or take the case off and fit a fan.

Thank you for the insight. I didn't consider deeper into various generations of cpu etc

Do you have a chromecast ultra or a standard chromecast?

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