What are Chromecasts used for? Should I buy one?
They want to work with the big content companies. The end game might be ads on the chromecast served through Google with the stick is access to chromecast and the carrot is ad-optimization by Google and maybe blocking pirated content.
This is not just a constant thing we're seeing either. Expect Google to become ever more restrictive and anti-piracy, as they delve deeper into the content selling business. The days of the "Open Google" are long gone now, and they're never coming back.
If your remote has a keyboard on it then more power to you, but none of mine do, and the phone is 1000x easier.
For my money, the best remote I ever used was the original TiVo. There's something a lot more haptic about a physical remote with real buttons. And I have yet to see a Chromecast remote app that's very good. Where's the dedicated "skip back 9 seconds" button? Or "turn close captioning on"? These are things I do all the time while watching shows.
Then, I gave away my Apple TV and bought a Chromecast. Searching for content.. jumping between content sources.. it's all easier on the phone.
What I like about Chromecast is that their integration is simply a small button added to other apps that I'm already familiar with.
For example, I use Netflix as normal but basically choose where the output should go. It's actually quite similar to Apple's AirPlay integration although the Chromecast has never had an issue (AirPlay always seemed to have latency issues).
Not if you want to pick what to watch with someone else.
Bad argument. Any remote control can run out of battery.
But moreover, when your phone dies and you're using it as a remote at home, you likely have the charger right there are home too. When the AAAs in your dedicated remote die (though PERHAPS more infrequently) you need to go running around to see where you shoved that container of AAAs, find that they're all actually the dead ones, and then go to the store.
Battery is only the second worst part about using a phone as a remote, the worst being that a phone is anti-social while watching television (on a television) is social.
It sounds like with your current set up a chromecast might only be slightly more convenient, so you might not be missing much.
It has a simple unintrusive ui which is nice.
Netflix/Hulu - no user myself and I'm not sure if those services are available outside of the US/available in DE. Tab casting, as far as I understand that, is a Chrome feature. I'm a Firefox guy. Would I be able to do something useful with that device?
Right now it seems like it would be equivalent to the Pi w/ xbmc, in an arguably smaller/nicer package. I'm hoping for a killer feature that I haven't considered/noticed :)
I'm basically in the same situation as you. I already have Raspbmc set up on my Raspberry Pi, and see little reason to purchase a Chromecast. In my understanding, the "killer feature" is that it's supported by an increasingly large number of Android apps, which don't have support for casting to arbitrary UPnP targets as far as I'm aware.
Currently my main applications used by my chromecast are watchever (a service like netflix), twitch (using a third party app shame on me ;)) and youtube while I use the Pi mainly for "offline" media.
The most appealing feature of the chromecast is that it "just works" and I never had major problem with it (super easy setup, great integration into existing apps, turns on the tv once it is activated on my phone and so on). For me it delivers on the promises, which manufacturers of "smart TVs" made but failed to achieve in their products.
I reverted back to using foobar2000 on windows with the upnp plugin and my Sony DLNA capable TV for all local media (and a USB stick for mp3s rsync'ed with my laptop). Works fine. The TV does youtube, netflix, amazon video, iplayer etc already. This is a 3 year old Bravia EX unit worth about £100 now.
The only issue I still have is that the wifi dongle I attached to the RPi can only pull 10Mb/s. I hear this is due to lack of power provided by the RPi to its USB ports and that it can be mitigated by using a powered USB hub, but I haven't tried that yet. 10Mb/s is enough to stream SD and some HD, but not all HD. I've tweaked the buffering settings to make this a little more bearable but honestly I usually end up transcoding a lower-bitrate version for the RPi to stream, which is a pain without a UPnP server to do that transparently.