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Comment by mbreese | Hacker News Reader

How much of this is an "end" to Chromecast and a rebranding of Chromecast to "Google TV Streamer"? It seems like the bare-bones experience of a Chromecast being tied to a phone (or browser) is getting replaced with an Apple TV like experience. If this is the case, it might be a (rare) example of a good branding shift from Google.

I have had two Chromecasts (the original and an Ultra) and I feel like both were hampered by the phone requirement. Part of this is my house having kids without phone who would have liked to have access to Netflix, and part is due to my Apple TV use, which I use far more often.

I'm sure there will be some loss of functionality here, but hopefully it's with the benefit of a much better user experience.

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Emailers are telling me this is more of a rebrand so I've replaced the submitted title "Google is killing Chromecast" with the unfortunately press-releasey original.

If anyone suggests a better title (i.e. more accurate and neutral, preferably using representative language from the article), we can change it again.

"Google is redefining Chromecast as Google Cast".

The 4K Chromecast "with Google TV" basically was that already, since it has the full-screen menu-based interface and remote. It seems a bit silly to me that they're tossing the brand aside but maybe they're doing that for exactly this reason.

I own the 4K Chromecast and it's pretty good. But in my opinion "Chromecast" was always a bad brand name. I guess it originated in the browser, but it's so far removed from that now; "Chrome" no longer makes sense.

Probably true, but it's not like "Google TV Streamer" is any better.

There’s gonna be about 12 more names/products before they settle on something.

Nest TV, Gemini TV...

Gemini Ultra Nest TV with Chrome Cast Ultra™

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

Yeah that's just an awful name, could've just gone with a streamlined version of what they have, e.g. "Google Cast".

"Google TV Streamer" pretty exactly describes what this thing does. It's from Google, and it streams things to your TV.

"Chromecast" was more puzzling. What's "Chrome"? Isn't that a browser? What does this have to do with anything? And what is "cast"? Does it broadcast something? Etc.

On the other hand, "Google TV Streamer" also describes Chromecasts and is immensely less memorable or distinctive.

It'd be like if Apple decided to rebrand Macbook to be "Apple Laptop". Sure, it's accurate. It's also crap.

Google TV was also the name of their failed settop box strategy like a dozen years ago.

I think they gave out one from Logitech (with a keyboard!) at an I/O one year.

To be fair, "MacBook" is basically a portmanteau of "Macintosh Notebook", so it's really not that far removed from "Apple Laptop".

But the point is that they're giving up distinctive, widely-recognized branding for a bland, flavorless alternative

> It'd be like if Apple decided to rebrand Macbook to be "Apple Laptop". Sure, it's accurate. It's also crap.

You get used to it. They also called the Apple smartwatch "Apple Watch" from the beginning, and nobody is complaining. So "Apple Laptop" or "Apple Phone" would be just as good.

You could say the same about "Chromebooks" -- but that doesn't matter anymore. Thanks to Chromebooks dominating schools and Google's general ubiquity, almost everyone knows what Chrome is if you've used a computer in the past decade.

The only market who wouldn't know is the same crowd that would never use a smart TV anyway.

Wait til you hear about Play Store. Been over a decade and I still cringe.

Confused as to why "Google TV" didn't win out in the end. Seems like the obvious choice. Is it boring? Sure.

Does it immediately tell you absolutely everything you likely need to know if you're not already buying an Apple TV? Yes.

Google TV is already the name of their software platform (based on the Android TV OS) that TVs run

Yes but that's really the same as this just in a separate box. Makes total sense to bring it under the same naming tree.

I'd call it "Google TV Box" though. Streaming is too contrived and not everyone knows what it means. Xiaomi use the Box naming too and that seems to go down well.

Agreed. My initial guess was that the Google TV Streaming name had something to do with a Twitch-like streaming platform.

Or maybe Google TV Hub if it has Matter and/or smart home functionality.

> Confused as to why "Google TV" didn't win out in the end.

The reason Google TV didn't win (and the reason why it kind of did) is that Google TV already won for something else closely related, which this is being associated with:

https://tv.google/

Google TV did win, didn't it? "Modern" Chromecasts (the ones that include a remote and which have a local UI) have Google TV, and are sold as such.

https://store.google.com/us/product/chromecast_google_tv

(If not, then: What am I missing?)

I agree, but they're not just rebranding. They also doubled the price, ostensibly because they changed the form factor and added "AI". I don't need a visible device or AI just to stream YouTube or other video apps.

They explicitly call it "premium" in the launch page. Time to move upmarket in the hopes of actually making a profit.

Roku sells dongles at the same price point, without many other services with which to subsidize the hardware. I am sure Roku monetizes the users in the same ways as Google can, so I do not understand how Google cannot make a profit from them.

> Google cannot make a profit from them

*enough profit

Remember that Google has sunset many products because those profits pale in comparison to search and advertising.

Sure, but I do not see how that improves by focusing on the “premium” hardware. Unless the box is actually cheaper, I would expect the AI capabilities to cost more (either on cloud infrastructure or higher performance chips). Worsening their margin per unit.

People just want to watch Netflix or Disney with minimum friction. A box that is twice the price of the competition, with questionably useful AI features does not seem a winning play.

> I would expect the AI capabilities to cost more (either on cloud infrastructure or higher performance chips). Worsening their margin per unit.

This is a problem for the next exec after the one behind this has happily parachuted to his next position before the chickens come home to roost on things like "long-term costs" and "fit with the overarching corporate strategy".

How does search make them money? They are paying everyone to be their default search. Isn't search just an input of data to push ads based on the search as well as taking the user with more metrics based on the search query?

It can, but it has to support all the ads infrastructure that is about to collapse.

About to collapse? How so?

>I am sure Roku monetizes the users in the same ways as Google can, so I do not understand how Google cannot make a profit from them.

The same way Roku does not make a profit from them.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ROKU/roku/profit-m...

That doesn't really matter, everyone know what a Chromecast is, that is worth far more than a descriptive name.

It was a good brand name when it launched, but not for how it evolved.

It was a device that made it possible to cast video from your Chrome browser. When it was released in 2013 it reinforced the superior utility of Chrome which had just began to dominate browser market share.

Embedding the Google Cast protocol directly into video streaming apps and having the Chromecast brand name coexist alongside the Android TV and Google TV brand names made things confusing.

The earlier Chromecasts did run a cut down Chrome on cut down ChromeOS. https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chr...

Exactly. They already killed the OG Chromecast with the "with Google TV" Chromecast.

Now they are just killing the Chromecast branding for now. But they've been known to kill a brand only to resurrect it a few years later.

> since it has the full-screen menu-based interface and remote

Most impotantly, it has ads!

Yeah that's really what kills it for me. Why do I have ads on a device I paíd for??

This drives me nuts. When I first got the original fire tv it was fast and had no ads. I could easily recommend it. Now it’s stuffed to the brim with ads and is incredibly slow. When this one dies I’ll likely not buy a hardware device from Amazon ever again.

At least on a Roku you can block the ads with a PiHole

Yeah sadly this doesn't work on a Fire TV Stick. It ignores DHCP and uses its own DNS resolver. Probably DoH or something, I didn't dig that deep into it.

Yep that's what I have now. Same story. It started with ever bigger ads for prime shows, then ads for shows on other streamers I don't subscribe to. And now half-screen apps for chocolates and perfumes etc. In Spain by the way.

Also now I have to pay extra to skip ads on prime :(

I'm thinking of getting an Apple TV but considering how expensive it is I'm waiting for the next version. I don't want to pay top dollar for the 2022 version.

Chromecast is a terrible brand. It immediately confuses the customer. Why does my Chromecast not have Chrome on it? Who thought of that?

I have one of these and I am going to be blunt: I just can't figure out the privacy. At. All. I have kids (and their many friends) running through the house using TVs and streaming etc and I don't want them browsing through my YouTube viewing history or filling it up with their dumb kid shows nor accessing things I don't think are appropriate at random times.

But for whatever reason when I plug in the 4K with Google it's the annoying nagbot that refuses to do anything unless I'm logged in (not to mention my password is not exactly easy to type using the remote) and then it drags in my whole YouTube history and the device is useless and nags you to hell when not logged in.

It's so much easier and less insane to just use Roku. I can throw YouTube videos at the Roku without being logged in and the device works just fine. Google seems to be constantly changing things and I have no interest in playing wack-a-mole with whatever thing they decide to change this week.

Roku's just work and they rarely change. That trust just does not exist with Google's products.

I feel that way about casting in general.

The prompt to login whenever you cast to an arbitrary TV feels like a footgun. I don't want whatever community I'm watching with to know what the algorithm thinks I like. The distance between "annoying" and "embarrassing" is directly correlated to who is in the room to observe.

Exactly! For the Chromecast at our cabin, the fact that people cast from their own phone is a feature. No shared logins between families staying there, no need to log in and out from some additional device.

Yup, I agree. They really should not have called this "with Google TV" thing a "Chromecast" in the first place. The earlier Chromecast devices were so simple and extremely pleasant to use. They did their thing extremely well. It really felt like a bait and switch when I unboxed this and plugged in. It doesn't even show up as a cast destination in YouTube when not logged in while every single Roku in the house is there and does what the old Chromecasts used to do. To be fair a remote for pause and volume seemed like a natural addition, because that had been a bit clunky with the older Chromecasts when doing like family watching. I also really liked the Chromecast Audio while it worked. After this "with Google TV" thing Chromecast moved from one of my regular recommends to family etc to never being mentioned.

I have had a few generations of Chromecast, including the OG from ten years ago.

The latest one in my bunch has a remote and menus and stuff, and is what I presume y'all are talking about. I've seen it referred to as CCWGTV.

"Privacy" seems easy-enough and is not so dissimilar to "privacy" on any other shared computer: Just set up profiles. One for you, one or more for kids, one for guests, or whatever makes sense.

For your own profile, set a PIN. (The included d-pad remote makes PIN entry easy-enough.)

Aaaand... done?

Mine also does old-school phone-driven Chromecast stuff just fine with zero profiles logged in -- while it is just sitting there at the profile-select screen. In this mode, it accepts Youtube and Spotify and whatever else I throw at it.

---

Am I doing something wrong?

Exactly -- it's not an end at all, just a rebranding.

And it's about time. "Chromecast" was always a terrible brand IMHO, because it had utterly nothing whatsoever to do with Chrome, except that there happened to be a "Cast..." menu item in Chrome. But you can cast from lots of apps that aren't Chrome. It would have made just as much sense to call it "Gmailcast" -- that is to say, no sense at all.

"Google TV Streamer" isn't particularly memorable, but it's perfectly logical and intuitive. And it doesn't introduce confusion with a browser. Google wants the brand to be Google directly, not some sub-brand. Makes sense to me.

From a user perspective you're right but from a technical sense, Chromecast got its roots as little more than a remote-controlled Chrome session. Alike the Netflix DIAL protocol that it evolved from, Chromecast was for many years merely a hdmi-out stick device that ran Chrome!

It's not at all clear to users though, isn't a meaningful name. And now as well as web there are also Android Custom Receivers from Chromecast. https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/web_receiver/basic https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/android_tv_receiver/...

It would have been interesting if there was an alternate path where Chromecast really did expose its underlying browser-ness better. If I could just tell my phone to cast hacker news and then scroll on my phone's screen. I wonder if that was ever considered.

Also note that ChromeOS was also a web-centered thing at the time, so there was some symbiosis with that. Both web powered tech platforms. But given the recent announcement that Google is killing ChromeOS & Android is the way forward for everyone, well, extra sensible that Chromecast has to go: finalizing/cementing the (imo unfortunate for all) cultural victory of Android-over-all at Google.

I agree. The branding doesn't really matter as long as casting still works. It seems like an odd choice for Google to frame this in such dramatic terms, especially when so many people have already been burned by their tendency to kill popular products out of the blue.

I get the lamentation of the final nail in the coffin of what was just a simple wireless HDMI dongle, and I agree that there's a real need for that. Having said that, I love my 4K Google TV Chromecasts. All I'd ever wanted was something that combined the Fire TV Stick and the Chromecast into one device, and this delivered perfectly. The compact form factor makes it easy to keep a spare in my backpack for whenever I might need it while away from home, which comes in handy often.

My problem with this is that it sounds like they're discontinuing a product that works perfectly well, and replacing it with something slightly worse (for my use case) at 2x the price. Granted, for now they are still selling the Chromecast, so they have time to introduce a future "Google TV Streamer Mini" that retains the form factor of the Chromecast. As long as they do that, I don't really care what they call it.

For the right user, the Chromecast is the perfect device. Trouble is, for multi-user households or other users that don't fit the perfect mold its flaws quickly become apparent. Hopefully this device can fix most of the flaws while still providing that easy way of getting video from my device to my TV screen without logins and apps or anything getting in the way. I don't use "casting" often but there are times when it is by far the easiest way to view content.

Well, back in the day (and I feel old now), the ability to cast a chrome tab to a TV with a $30 dongle was huge. It was a great brand until it got commoditized.

I never understood the utility. So could a 10$ HDMI cable?

I bought a Chromecast thinking it could play videos from a network drive like XBMP, but it couldn't and I thought it was beyond useless with its buggy and slow interface.

It's like comparing the PSP's un-included HDMI cable setup to the Switch's slick integration of an HDMI dock and saying "well actually Sony did the portable to TV tech first".

You plugged it in once to what used to be dumb TV's and in 2-3 presses I can have whatever was on my phone on my TV, with no fanagling with a USB to HDMI dongle into an HDMI cable, which may phone may or may not even support.

And once it was playing you didn't really have to manage the connection for Youtube; Your phone could die and it'll still play since it's ultimately not actually extracting the content from your phone's network.

> I thought it was beyond useless with its buggy and slow interface.

The older Chromecasts' didn't really have an interface once you set it up. I just casted from phone, waited 5 seconds and it was done. Honestly prefer my Ultra to the newer Google TV dongles precisely because there's no unnecesary middleman interface. My phone should and did manage all of that.

As a brand I’m of the opinion that “Chromecast” was a huge success. All non technical people I know basically call any stick/dongle and even devices like an Apple TV a “Chromecast”. For them, if you watch anything that isn’t linear cable TV (so: YouTube, Netflix etc.) on your TV you’re “casting”. And for a while Chromecast was fantastic because it turned any dumb TV into a smart TV.

Now that every TV has apps and even the older people watch more streaming than cable TV, sure, it is a good moment to say goodbye to the mental image of what Chromecast was. But if you measure success in tech by how many people outside of the “HN crowd” are familiar with a thing, Chromecast is right up there with something like Dropbox.

the phone/browser lock-in is largely due to lack of a standardized and open protocol to stream content in this manner. in the wireless-display-sharing ecosystem the chromecast is unique in that, when possible, it streams content from the original provider on a local client rather than relying on mirroring your device's display. this gives a better user experience but required participation from each service provider.

i'm surprised netflix or amazon hasn't tried to create a standardized protocol for asking another client to initiate a stream from a provider on your behalf, including passing account credentials and allowing for widevine and other drm. if this was successful, it would open the market for chromecast-like-devices from other vendors.

I was at my brother's on vacation and we were sharing some vacation pics. The mirroring worked pretty well but I do wish there were a straightforward way to just cast a browser to a TV in a standard way.

In Windows, you can press Win+K to pull up the Cast menu. Lots of smart TVs and streaming devices will work with it. You can mirror or extend your display to it.

This is through standardized protocols.

I admittedly don't use Windows.

> amazon hasn't tried to create a standardized protocol

Amazon is pushing Matter Cast, which is in many ways superior to Google Cast, most of all by being open. Its biggest downside is that it's not supported by anyone else.

The new (Google TV Streamer) device seems to support Matter as a protocol, so maybe there is more hope here...

> most of all by being open

Didn't Chromecasts work with DIAL which was an open protocol?

https://www.dial-multiscreen.org/dial/protocol-specification

Google Cast was originally built on top of DIAL, but DIAL itself is mostly about device discovery IIRC. Nowadays it's all mDNS instead.

DIAL is literally discovery and launch. The discovery part is just SSDP. The rest of DIAL is entirely state tracking the stream, sending playback commands, requests to launch content, etc. through REST endpoints. It seems entirely possible to me for a revision of the spec based off mDNS for discovery rather than UPnP, and most of the document would be the same.

The DIAL spec documents spend three pages talking about discovery and sixteen pages talking about state tracking, launching, HDMI-CEC, etc.

It's a pretty basic protocol spec since it mostly relies on things like UPnP for discovery and HTTP REST so a lot of complications are already defined in other specs.

Well, better than Doesn't Matter Cast.

There's a lot of Matter Cast that feels fairly reasonable as a protocol, but the flaws here are so wildly absurd. I want this effort to sink so bad. As a protocol I vastly prefer Open Screen Protocol, which was begat to support W3c Secondary Screen wg's Presentstion API. https://w3c.github.io/openscreenprotocol/ https://www.w3.org/TR/presentation-api/

Matter Cast has what to me are grevious limitations:

1. Connecting clients can only talk to existing Endpoints running on the target device. If I use Tidal for example, the smart speaker or smart TV needs to already be setup with that app, and needs to be willing to let a background service run & register itself with the platform. https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip/blob/master/...

2. Only native apps are supported. There's no protocol to say open a webpage & control that. As a solo dev I can throw together a universal Presentation API multi-display experience in hours. Shipping even one native app would take many weekends & lots of legal hoops. Getting on the apps store for even 50% of TV's or speakers seems daunting beyond imagining.

3. No support for multi-party sessions. Only one user can interact at a time.

4. No support for the Web's Presentation API. Since it's not based around urls & web pages, it would require lots of additional work to make it support the standard web pages have to spawn a remote display.

By compare, Open Screen Protocol lets any target device open any web page, which is very similar to how Chromecast development works today (and how DIAL worked before). Whether the target device is Android, Apple, WebOS, Windows, Tizen, or other, the expectation that I could Open Screen Protocol cast to it remains the same. Where-as Matter Cast requires a native app on the device & the app has to be installed & potentially even greenlit by the target device platform itself.

OpenScreenProtocol really looks to have it all, & the model is so much more universal. Really wish we saw some device makers pushing for it these days.

>the phone/browser lock-in is largely due to lack of a standardized and open protocol to stream content in this manner.

I feel like the thing you are describing as lock-in is, in a critical sense, quite the opposite. It gave you the power to make a dumb TV into a versatile streaming system that's not locked down and beholden to Smart TV software.

I wouldn't say opposite. You're still choosing one company's platform.

> in the wireless-display-sharing ecosystem the chromecast is unique in that, when possible, it streams content from the original provider on a local client rather than relying on mirroring your device's display.

AirPlay has the same capabilities, I believe even in the original v1 version - back then only for Audio as it didn’t support video at all.

The standardized protocol already exists and it’s called DLNA which Chromecast initially cannibalized in its first release and then basically killed off every single other DLNA provider and app because they Sherlocked the feature into the Android operating system and to the Chrome browser.

Now that they are at risk of being split up for their monopoly, and as they lose an Antitrust case for their search monopoly, they are probably looking to kill off the Chrome brand because Chrome is how they entirely dominated the web, warping it to their standards and killing more open standards in favor of their Proprietary technology.

DLNA is meant to play media from a media server on a home network. It doesn't make sense for Internet services to implement DMS. The relevant standard for casting using web protocols is DIAL.

I vaguely remember DLNA... Which is to say, I remember it barely working at best and mostly just wasting a lot of time debugging configuration and network nonsense.

Arguably the biggest advantage of Chromecast was just not having to deal with all that.

Chromecast also allowed you to stream Netflix... I'm not sure DLNA ever got to that point.

I use DLNA every day. It just werx. But yes, it's designed to stream local files, so no Netlix et all.

Newer Chromecasts ship with a remote and do not require a phone. Multiple people can be logged in too.

True, but at that point, what does the "Chrome" part of Chromecast mean? It made much more sense when the device was tied to a browser, and then (kinda) apps on a phone. Once they added a remote, I think the writing was on the wall for the name "Chromecast".

Google TV is a better "brand", IMO.

but the new brand is actually "Google TV Streamer" (3 words)

why didnt they just go for "Google TV" (2 words)

they also could have played a bit "Google TOP" (because its a table top device) , "Google S" (S for Streamer) , i think the 3 word "Google TV Streamer" , is function over form gone wrong

There's an entire app called Google TV already. https://tv.google

Probably because they saw what happened with Apple TV (the device), Apple TV+ (the service) and TV (the app).

That's a whole headache I think Google is (wisely) trying to avoid here...

I think they've always had CEC remote control anyway. Was still a surprise the first time I backed out of a youtube video using the TV remote and saw what looked like the entire youtube app with search and everything.

>It seems like the bare-bones experience of a Chromecast being is getting replaced with an Apple TV like experience.

Weird thing about this is the best thing about Chromecast is it’s not an Apple TV form factor and experience and the worst thing about Apple TV is it’s not a Chromecast style stick.

I just don’t see where a TV would even exist that doesn’t offer what’s in the box built in already, but I definitely know a lot of TVs where Chromecast or AirPlay just doesn’t work on the base unit.

Every "smart" tv is definitely spying on you. Your best defense is never setting it up or buying a dumb tv I'd you can still find them. Control your data! If you're going to surrender your data willingly to apple, google then fine that's a choice, but smart TVs like modern cars have no choice.

Who even makes a good non-smart tv these days? I'm not going to limit my watching experience just to avoid a tv having apps.

No one. No one is making a good non-smart TV. The shitty TVs have smarts in them to subsidize the price by spying on you, and the expensive TVs are not going to compete with less features, right? Oh, and why not make more money by spying on you as well?

If you want a modern TV with correct colours, HDR, and useful inputs, you have to stop yourself from connecting a smart TV to the internet. There's just no other way. Roku's OS is absolutely usable without ever configuring it for internet access, and my particular brand of choice, TCL, offers an option to update the OS with a USB stick.

I use my TV with an AV receiver, and HDMI-CEC switching means the TV remote is literally hidden away. The TV has no say in what's happening to it at all.

Yeah the whole reason I ever recommended a Chromecast to people was that it was basically dummy simple. You know how to watch Netflix or YouTube on your phone? Great, you know how to watch it on your TV too.

My mother who hates every piece of technology and gets frustrated to the point of tears when things don't work like they did yesterday was just fine with a Chromecast. There's no separate Chromecast to learn, manage, or deal with. It's, effectively, a way to mirror your phone to your TV.

I regularly recommended them to people even with Smart TVs and stuff. There were often bugs, UI issues, general confusion... "Just plug this thing in and then use your phone as a remote" added a lot of value.

I don't know why I'd ever want a "Google TV". For $100 what does this give me over the crappy Smart TV UI I've already got? Do I really want to deal with Google's privacy track record over Apple's to save $40?

>I have had two Chromecasts (the original and an Ultra) and I feel like both were hampered by the phone requirement.

I rarely was. Ultiamately I usually have some piece of tech on hand and I just wanted some way to get youtube on my dumb TV.

But I also get it. that tv casting has more or less been built into every modern smart TV (and we aren't getting many good dumb tv's these days). So focusing on something more robust instead of selling a cheap streaming stick seems inevitable.

Streamer is 3x more expensive vs Chromecast.

- $30 HD Chromecast https://www.amazon.com/Chromecast-Google-TV-Streaming-Entert...

- $99 ("just") Streamer https://store.google.com/product/google_tv_streamer

>the original

FYI Google stopped pushing critical security updates to the 1st gen Chromecast already. I'm not saying it joined a botnet already but maybe~ https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/1023...

The decent solution to the remote-less Chromecast is to buy a super cheap android tablet to use as a remote.

The ending allows them end support which is September 2027.

The major difference is between a device powered by the TV vs an always on device.

Targeted use vs constant home inhabitants monitoring.

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