The replacement ("Google TV streamer") seems to be a quite different device – most importantly, one that will be very visible next to a TV, and not out of sight behind it like its predecessor.
For anyone not particularly interested in having "AI" in their streaming stick (and this being Google, surely that will just happen in the cloud...?), I'm not sure if that's an improvement.
If this is what we can expect from "Gemini" technology, it's damning it with faint praise. Who even cares. Nobody has the problem of really wanting a summary of a season of TV, but they just can't get it because darn it all they lack access to super advanced AI. Nobody had that problem 10 years ago and they still don't. If I were them I'd scrub that off the marketing, it's a negative if it's anything.
You're clearly underestimating the 2021 SoC in it. It does 20 GFLOPS!
If I can get a movie summary from a real intelligence for free online, why would I bother with an AI generated summary?
It's here: recapflix.com (and it's not at all perfect, due to a number of reasons...).
It was actually useful in the rare case that you wana skip an episode or get caught up on some obscure anime/show, but otherwise, meh.
Who even needs this crap? Just watch the goddamn show, people.
I don't think so at all. I'm not sure if anyone I know outside of tech has ever even heard of Chromecast. It was never super popular. While every single one of them knows what an Apple TV is, and they know what the Chrome browser is.
The replacement makes much more sense. It's just branded as Google, and what it does -- it's a TV streamer. The branding tells you that it's Google's version of an Apple TV, while "Chromecast" told you nothing except that maybe it had to do with a browser (which it didn't).
Chromecast was always a bizarre name to begin with, since it didn't really have anything to do with Chrome. Chrome wasn't necessary to use it, nor did it run Chrome for you.
It's only a matter of time until Pixel gets renamed to "Google Phone".
gPhone.
Edit: to clarify, since somebody downvoted me, I'm just saying it's funny that they refactored all their properties into multiple legal entities and now several years later might want to do the opposite. You can't expect consistent behavior from these companies over time.
> one that will be very visible next to a TV, and not out of sight behind it like its predecessor.
You're now advertising to anyone who visits your home.
But those that have at least subjectively/anecdotally seem pretty happy with it – so why kill it and start from scratch?
I'm actually a big proponent of moving TV smarts out of the display just as I am in cars.
"Cast" is a pretty ubiquitous term and, anecdotally, Chromecast is almost always the device I find when traveling.
Probably selection bias on my part, but I'd expect most people to be aware of Chromecast unless they're over the age of ~70 and fully Apple-oriented.
Seems like throwing away a perfectly well known brand.
What's frustrating in this thread is how many people are conflating the weird dongle product with the extremely successful streaming control protocol. Only the weird thing is being cancelled!
Chromecast first gen was in 2013.
Apple actually beat Google on this one in terms of time.
Come on man
Practically, this means that you can take phone calls, hibernate your computer, kill a source app on your phone, leave the house entirely etc. with Chromecast without interrupting whatever's playing on a TV or stereo, while with Airplay, playback usually stops in these scenarios. Airplay is also a bigger battery drain as a result, in my experience.
They both support AirPlay these days, I've never been able to use Google Cast natively with a TV here, which is a shame for my use cases (Netflix doesn't support it, and I generally don't like to have my phone connected to the TV via Wi-Fi for the entire duration of a movie).
Edit: Turns out LG is currently in the process of adding it, and Samsung seems to have support in some models as well, but it's definitely not ubiquitous.
I ask because when I have travelled for work, it's the corporate hotels that have often baked a Chromecast into their TV experience, even to the point of sorting out their wifi network so you're only able to cast to the screen in your room. Their splash screen offers "live TV" or the option to "stream from your phone".
They often don't shout about the fact that it's a chromecast doing the work, but the telltale standby screen that shows up when you're not casting something normally confirms it.