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Comment by hullo | Hacker News Reader

That sounds smart to me, but for Netflix at least, generally everyone would use the Netflix app on the Apple TV (which is solid) rather than airplay from their device. YouTube is another story, though, it's a disaster on the Apple TV and I'll almost always stream from my phone. Of course, if I'm streaming to my Apple TV I'm by definition at home with a charger nearby, so this isn't a key differentiator.

But that brings up what I think is the most interesting use case – portability: put it in your bag and forget it until you need to present/watch something for work/at a friends house.

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AFAICS, it doesn't stream from the device, it streams from the web, so charger is not a problem....

With many TVs with built in youtube support and many other devices already connected to the TVs that have you tube, xbox, PCs, PS4, Wii, Roku, etc. Why would you buy it? Just so that I don't have to search what I am watching on my phone on my TV again? For the price this might still be worth enough to spend for that feature. But just trying to understand if there is anything else there is to it.

The scenario that Google presented was users doing stuff on their phones/tablets and then saying to themselves, "Hey, let's play this on the big TV screen." That's a different use case to Google TV/Xbox/PS4 etc.

They made a lot of the fact that, with Chromecast, your phone/tablet works as a TV remote.

Also, people who are already familiar with their phones/tablets don't have to learn a new UI etc.

And it doesn't have to deliver a lot of value to justify $35....

> generally everyone would use the Netflix app on the Apple TV (which is solid) rather than airplay from their device

Only people that have Apple TVs. Apple has sold a lot of them, but it's a fairly niche device that costs 3x what this one does. They also work differently so that you're not streaming from your device to the Chromecast dongle, but that you're essentially just telling it what to play (you can then use your device as normal). This is pretty neat, I for one would use it just so I would not have to deal with the terrible Apple TV remote control anymore. Typing in anything is a frustrating experience, I'd rather type from my phone or computer and then have it play where I'd like (my TV).

The Apple Remote app is a decent, but not great, alternative to the Apple TV remote.

Yes, but the comment I was responding to was specifically about the Chromecast vs Apple TV - while we use ours a lot, it certainly has a far from perfect interface. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone who wasn't on the Apple ecosystem already, and would be using the Remote app on their phone/iPad to type search queries rather than up up down down left right left righting for minutes at a time.

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