Google blocks Chromecast app that let you stream your own videos | Hacker News Reader

Google blocks Chromecast app that let you stream your own videos

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53 pointsaustengary39 comments

The Chromecast would be a pretty great device with a few hundred third-party apps, including streaming radio, a photo viewer, and other stuff that could be easily implemented on top of the existing SDK. And I was planning on writing a specialty app at some point. I have a whitelisted device and I've been fooling around with the SDK. It's a nice platform.

But there's several comments in the Koushik Dutta thread from people who "spoke to Googlers" suggesting that Google intends to keep very tight control over the platform and only allow major media companies to ship apps. If this is the case, the Chromecast is a pretty worthless competitor to the average, proprietary smart TV, which already does Netflix, Hulu, etc., and doesn't require the customer to use multiple devices to turn on the TV and play content.

As somebody who once spent a couple months of evenings hacking on Google Wave bots, I'm ready to drop my Chromecast plans like a hot potato. If there isn't a robust market for third-party apps, this thing's going to be another stinker.

> But there's several comments in the Koushik Dutta thread from people who "spoke to Googlers"

To be fair, I only see the one comment mentioning that and it's by Koushik Dutta himself, so I don't think that really says anything beyond what's in the initial post. In fact, there is a googler in there asking for patience, though it doesn't appear that he actually works on chromecast.

On the side of patience, it doesn't make much sense to make an SDK and tell people about it if making apps is going to be more or less invitation only. And it would be pretty weird to allow arbitrary browser tab broadcasting but not arbitrary app broadcasting, since it's media that's (ridiculously) licensed to be played in a browser but not on a TV that made all the media companies go apoplectic with google TV in the first place.

All that said, I agree that cat and mouse games with potential device hackers is super lame and makes it not that much more valuable than an hdmi cord. On the one hand, it's (sort of) wireless hdmi, on the other, it only works with a tiny list of whitelisted apps! Not exactly a glowing advertising slogan.

Yup. Android/Google fanboys already have Android HDMI sticks to get their Google + TV fix - little Chinese no-names like Smallart are actually making some very nice devices. Chromecast is Google's answer to Apple TV, not iTV. It's just the latest iteration of GoogleTV and will do just as well.

I'm happily waiting for my Android stick to come in the mail for my kids' TV.

You can stream your Mac's screen with a VLC video playing full-screen and effectively watch whatever you want on an Apple TV.

This is purely conjecture, they have no way of knowing if breaking changes were intentional.

Also: Any media that can be played in your browser can be played with Chromecast, Just start casting and go to "File:///C:/" and traverse your file system/find your media. Obviously this applies to your desktop, not your phone.

The point of the app that got broken was to play media directly from your phone. The way Koush describes the breakage makes it sound pretty intentional to me. It makes sense why they did it though, and even if it's limited to Youtube and Netflix for the price that's still a great deal.

What is the evidence for the claim that this was an intentional move by Google rather than just them breaking an unpublished protocol?

They reference Koushik Dutta in the sources. He believes it's intentional, see: https://plus.google.com/110558071969009568835/posts/ZeHgRXS6...

His only evidence seemed to be that this was the second time it happened.

It could still be a bit of both. This particular case might probably be a coincidence, but from a business perspective it would also make perfect sense for Google to keep some control over the device.

From a business perspective it doesn't make sense to block a very useful feature like this. My vote goes with them simply moving around the private API for technical reasons.

Is this the future? You buy a device but the manufacturer actually owns it?

A very alarming future when you consider the digitization and electrification of everything. Imagine prescription eye glasses that turn off myopic correction when you miss a payment, refrigerators that report their contents to the local health labs, automobiles that find it unusual for you to be driving after 1am, cell phones that overheard you say, "the government is too big".

Electric chains more binding than anything our forefathers sought to escape from.

>>>Imagine prescription eye glasses that turn off myopic correction when you miss a payment

Philip K. Dick already did, from Ubik --

Back in the kitchen he fished in his various pockets for a dime, and, with it, started up the coffeepot. Sniffing the -- to-him -- very unusual smell, he again consulted his watch, saw that fifteen minutes had passed: he therefore vigorously strode to the apt door, turned the knob and pulled on the release bolt.

The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please."

He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I’ll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it. "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you."

"I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt."

In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.

"You discover I’m right," the door said. It sounded smug.

From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.

"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.

>cell phones that overheard you say, "the government is too big".

This is the position of a majority of the House of Representatives. That's more than a little paranoid.

If your car finds it unusual for you to be driving late at night, it will be because your private auto insurance company realized it could run a higher profit margin by not paying out claims that result from nighttime accidents, the competition agreed, and consumer protection is considered too "big government" to implement.

It's the past. This isn't news. PCs have always sat in a happy little bubble of freedom while the rest of consumer electronics are a wasteland of vendor-controlled devices or low-rent poorly-interoperable crap.

The gaming consoles have been struggling in a war of control against their developers and hackers since the '80s. Sony has been trying to control the world of video and audio media since Betamax.

The only thing that's changed is that app-driven devices and always-on internet connections make this back-and-forth far more obvious. You download app from some guy, and the next system update kills it. You couldn't do that on your Discman.

Well it is pretty heavily subsidized...

Which is, from the users perspective, pretty irrelevant. The user bought it and is the legal owner of the device. Everything else is a calculation of the seller and his problem (tm).

I agree, but once you start putting a price tag on freedom, human beings are too willing to make compromises.

I guess humans just like paying for freedom with blood, rather than money.

Also, most people can;t afford to buy quality stuff in every domain. The lucky few who can buy good furniture or a good house will rarely have money remaining to buy good computing devices. A lot of us tech-savvy people but these before the rest because we have a passion for technology and/or make money out of it, but we're the exception in that regard.

And let's not forget how many people like their devices to be entirely controlled, because they're afraid of entering the wrong commands. This stuff requires not only money but also time, and most people have neither to sacrifice for technology.

Many people like their devices entirely preconfigured.

A lot of people are well aware that e.g. their cell phone is bound to a provider and that this is a significant drawback.

Let's not mingle that.

Subsidized how? I thought the BOM was like US$20. They might not be making a huge margin, but for god's sake, they're not bleeding to death on each sale. And those sold directly from their own site is all profit.

Not sure I understand this, isn't the device just a low-cost implementation of a DIAL device? http://www.dial-multiscreen.org

Yes, but DIAL requires a centralized registry of whitelisted apps (and they're using their own registry for ChromeCast, not the dial-multiscreen.com one); my reading is that Google is un-whitelisting any apps that allow streaming of local media.

Honestly, it's really silly since the built-in Chrome casting webapp is basically "throw arbitrary content at the screen via WebRTC" -- so hypothetically you could write a local WebRTC client that pushed your local video content to the device (and sidestep any whitelist restrictions). Unfortunately, WebRTC looks like a needlessly complicated protocol to implement.

> But he also voiced support for Chromecast's tab casting feature, which essentially gives users limitless viewing options so long as they're watching something in a Chrome browser.

I have not had a good experience with this. None of my personal media is in a format that Chrome will play let alone stream to Chromecast.

FYI, Plex will transcode your personal content to something that an HTML5 player can view on the fly. I can't recommend it highly enough.

(Correction: Plex uses a Flash player . . . so Plex is still great, but it doesn't help solve this issue.)

If you are using iOS, it somehow detects it and uses quicktime player to load the video instead. If you are somehow able to trick chrome into telling Plex to show the iOS version, you may be able to stream it to the chromecast.

CheapCast[1] + a cheap Android 4.2 dongle[2] may make Chromecast platform lockdown irrelevant[3].

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.maui.cheapc...

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEN1X3BR910

[3] ... for those willing and able to muck about.

That doesn't seem to let you stream local videos.

No, this will just implement the DIAL protocol, but the app will allow hooks for other developers to build whatever they like. My point was that there are open solutions to implement a DIAL compliant dongle, if indeed it turns out that Google locks down Chromecast.

Don't be evil?

How is making internal changes to an unpublished API evil?

You know, morals are relative ;)

Is there a way to put your own custom OS on a Chromecast? The hardware seems great for allowing some third party (maybe via Kickstarter) to build a truly open platform on top of it.

So, you don't really own a Chromecast. Google lets you use it, as long as you use it the way they approve. Sounds more like a lease than a purchase.

Open always wins, until it conflicts with your business interests.

Your comment reads like an entry in daring fireball, just trollish nonsense. They pushed an update that broke some non official/supported functionality, I'm not sure what "business interests" you're babbling about.

Simple. Google hopes to woo Hulu, HBO and others. They can't if they keep it open.

Like almost everything Google does, they never said this was open. It doesn't seem like anything was 'blocked' - it was just never supported in the first place.

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