Nexus Player
google.com
google.com
I guess I'm just not the average user, but the Chromecast handily beats what this (and other options in this genre, i.e., Apple TV / Fire TV / Roku) have to offer. I don't want another remote control. And making my phone the best remote control is an awesome solution. And the Chromecast doesn't take up any room in my living room / entertainment center. And it's only thrity-five-goddamn-dollars.
I guess the downside is that I can't play crappy games on my big screen. Darn.
I think Google stumbled on a very great idea with Chromecast. I don't want a smart TV with tons of features and a shitty interface that I have to navigate through with an awkward pad.
I want an extremely dumb TV that only displays what my other terminals (laptop, tablet and phone) tell it to display.
NO REMOTE IN THE WORLD will ever beat an app on a tablet or phone. I can search and browse so easily on my tablet to find what I want. I can start a video and then explore other stuff. It's the perfect setup.
If only I could pay the NFL for a streaming-only HD football package, I would have literally everything I need for consuming video. But I don't think that will ever happen (at least without having to get a cable/satellite subscription which I refuse to ever do again).
The little exclusivity pact the NFL and the major Cable companies have makes me have zero qualms about just straight stealing the content. If they have me a legitimate way to pay for every Packers game (directly through the NFL, not a cable provider) I would do it in a heartbeat, but they haven't, so screw 'em.
Apparently there's a way to signup and pay for NFL game pass using a VPN and pretending to be in Europe but I won't do that on sheer principle. It's insane to me I could legally pay for NFL outside of the US but inside the US I have to go through a third party (cable company) to get streaming access.
0 - http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/15/6982049/hbo-go-will-offer...
I wouldn't be surprised if DirectTV has some sort of exclusive contract to provide all of the games, but that can't last forever.
There is also a service called NFL GamePass which lets you watch games live if you live outside the North American market. I think the geographic restriction can be gotten around using VPNs & other geo-location defeating measures, but I've never tried.
The games for both NFL Rewind & GamePass are streamed via their website, and there is an official Android app, as well as a Plex app, and an XBMC plugin. The quality is not great, but it is better than nothing.
I'm pretty sure I'd regret giving those things up.
(I couldn't seem to reply to you directly for whatever reason)
It's not a technical limitation by the cable companies/NFL, it's literally just bureaucratic bullshit.
Except when you want to quickly pause.
Amazingly enough, living smack dab in the middle of a massive city (San Diego), I can't get this offer. The NFL and the cable/satellite companies are practically begging me to steal their content when they come out with stupid shit like this.
If this were a national offering, I'd get it in a heartbeat. Why it's not a national offering I have no idea.
Phone batteries get low every day. Having to walk to where your phone is charging to change the channel is a bad experience.
Using the phone as a remote is anti-social. I can't pick out what to watch with the person who's sitting in the chair across the room.
Chromecast is good for accidental discovery. You come across an interesting talk on YouTube, Chromecast is good for that.
Chromecast is also good for content that "lives" on your phone, like podcasts.
But Chromecast is bad for picking out a movie or TV show to watch, especially in the company of others.
> Phone batteries get low every day. Having to walk to where your phone is charging to change the channel is a bad experience.
I have solved the fairly rare occurrence of my phone dying when I want to watch a movie by having a charger next to my coffee table. I mean, maybe we just have different experiences, but has this actually happened to you? Regularly? Does it take up more or less time than hunting down a lost remote control?
> Using the phone as a remote is anti-social. I can't pick out what to watch with the person who's sitting in the chair across the room.
You'll have to instead talk to them, or have them sit closer and look over your shoulder. Not more or less social, just a different type of social. And add to that, the ability to have multiple people use their individual devices to queue videos is an excellent social experience
I have a charger next to my coffee table too, but then I have to sit in the seat next to the coffee table every time. And I have to reach over to use the phone because the charger cord isn't very long.
> Does it take up more or less time than hunting down a lost remote control?
Far less time. The remote isn't an object that gets moved around. It spends most of it's lifetime in a single room. If you lose it there's a 90% chance it's in the couch cushions.
> You'll have to instead talk to them, or have them sit closer and look over your shoulder. Not more or less social, just a different type of social. And add to that, the ability to have multiple people use their individual devices to queue videos is an excellent social experience
Multiple people staring at their own screens looking at different things is not social.
A: "Oh this one looks interesting"
B: "Which one"?
A: "Third row down, second movie."
B: "The one with the snowman?"
A: "No, it's got the actors smiling"
B: "Hm, third row down, second movie? I see a snowman"
No, its not, any more than using a regular remote as a remote is.
> Having to walk to where your phone is charging to change the channel is a bad experience.
Yes, it is, but that's not fundamental to the Chromecast, its just bad app UI design (for instance, you don't have the same issue if you are tab casting a regular web page that provides the selection before getting to the streaming media). There's no reason that an mobile app that uses the Google Cast API can't have a similar [or even better] optimized casting UI to a dumb tab-casted web page, its just that most so far don't. Extending the line of Google Cast devices -- if it extends reach -- may indirectly improve this, by getting app developers to spend more effort on the UX of their Cast support.
Apps on your phone should be able to control apps on the player, and the apps on the player can be used standalone. We'll have to see if apps from the Play Store gets Google Cast control, or if this only happens for the Chromecast-style web apps.
This has the advantage that you can select content on phone and then use the phone or remote on the player to control playback.
[1]: Reported by TechCrunch. Regular Chromecast is $35.
[2]: Possibly with 5GHz band? Regular Chromecast is 2.4GHz 802.11n only.
[3]: http://blog.laptopmag.com/intel-bay-trail-tablets-benchmarks; regular Chromecast maxes out at 1080p. EDIT: Aww, its specs say that it only outputs in 1080p.
The Roku is so much better. Everything is centralised, and the remote is a better interface than a phone screen. So I'm excited for the Nexus Player, as I want my Roku to be more hackable than it is. A Nexus Player with XBMC will be a dream.
I definitely find the phone/tablet much more comfortable for searching content and flinging it to the TV. Typing to search for a specific show on Netflix on my TV is a huge pain to me.
And casting through Netflix was painful in itself. So slow. But maybe that was just my phone/setup somehow.
On the other hand when you're interested in something specific. Car reviews for example. The TV-Queue is really sweet.
But I just cast from Youtube to my Sony Bravia or Roku's. I'm not sure if that's Google Cast or not. I just discovered it by accident last week.
Luckily, Mozilla is developing a very similar device (Matchstick [1]), and looking to do it better. I am unable to find the link at the moment, but they already support like 3 or 4 times as many media formats as chromecast. And Mozilla has a pretty good track record with hackable, open projects.
Chromecast pretty much just mirrors a screen, it also requires a separate device to control it. You could browse the web on this without requiring a phone or laptop.
But, again, like what? The Chromecast is able to display pretty complex HTML and JavaScript apps. And perhaps a new updated Chromecast with more horsepower would be able to do an even better job... But give me an example of something you think the Chromecast couldn't do that you'd want it to? It can do HD video, and has a decent HTML rendering engine....
Since the Nexus Player will have Chromecast support built-in (like all Android TV devices), software will hopefully continue to add support on their end.
The airwaves are crowded where I live. There are so many networks and sources of interference that any 2.4GHz network I set up inevitably drops out constantly. I've had 3 different routers.
The solution was to move to 5GHz. Pretty much everything else in the house can run on 5GHz and stay connected to the internet that way. Chromecast can only connect to 2.4GHz networks, so I have to run one for it, but it doesn't see devices on the 5GHz network even though they're on the same LAN.
Source: I couldn't use anything but "low quality mode" in my old apartment building unless i wanted artifacts and buffering every 30 seconds
This is a good point... it's not missing much in terms of features and functionality.
A pie in the sky idea, that none of these devices have tried to incorporate, is to have a webcam peripheral support to enable video chatting. This is the primary thing I still use my HTPC for. Being able to gather my wfie and/or friends into the living room to video chat with friends that live elsewhere, having those friends be able to see the whole room where we're able to sit comfortably, is really a great experience. And at this point, using an HTPC for that is overkill, in terms of horsepower needed. Incorporating a feature like this into a media device would be a killer feature for me. "Casting" a Skype or Hangout video chat.... I'd be all over that.
Captive portal support would also help in getting on more wireless networks. Chromecast is small enough to take traveling and would be useful to plug into hotel TV. But most hotels networks have captive portals.
At least Chromecast had updates and worked. My Nexus Q never worked as expected.
I'm looking forward to the Mozilla clone which will let me cast VLC directly to the TV. That will useful for me.
To me, they are just one more thing to keep track of and keep charged. I think connecting the remote control of things to the one device that is always around, instead of an assortment of tailor made devices, is brilliant.
I don't care about what people saying about wifi having gotten "better". By every single measurable criteria, it is slower, is less reliable, has lower capacity and higher latency than wired gigabit ethernet and I doubt that will change anytime soon.
I demand wired ethernet on my devices, and I know a bunch of other who do too.
Sure. We can all wish.
Back in the real world, this is the group of buyers who buys stuff like this, hook it up in a wifi-crowded area and then complain when things don't work properly.
Which is absolutely fair enough, because they're not technicians and not everyone should have to be capable of diagnosing network issues.
So why not just give these "commoners" something reliable in the first place?
(I own an XBox One)
XBOX's TV app also contains a lot of ads. And the apps load much slower.
Deleted comment
They probably don't want to provide the information because it's embarrassing.
I don't understand the appeal of these devices anymore. They are so anti-consumer it's not even funny. Imagine if DVDs rented from Blockbuster would only play in Blockbuster-brand DVD players, while those from Hollywood video would only work in theirs.
In the end I settled on good old torrents and some weekly transcoding to mp4 on a powerful desktop which all of the players in my home are able to stream from, at least for now. Who knows what features future devices will gut.
Put.io has that covered - you can stream any torrent to your TV using a chromecast.
If I obtain on my desktop, however, it very easily streams to every device in my house.
$99 seems high since it's the same as Apple TV and almost triple the Chromecast.
You can run the entire back catalog, maybe. But no one will want to until the apps and games are designed for non-touch input.
"It does all the most basic things that the competition does, at the same (or slightly higher) price, but maybe someday there will be apps made for it" hasn't worked very well for hardly anyone throughout history. Check with Palm, Microsoft, Ouya, Blackberry, and probably dozens of others that no one remembers.
My 4-year-old Google TV box (Logitech Revue) -- with Android 3.1 -- is really showing its age. The app store is pretty empty and it only supports things like Amazon Video and HBO Go because Android still had Flash back then.
The missing key is an HDMI input. My TV is always tuned to the Google TV input whether I'm watching live cable TV, a Netflix movie or casting a YouTube video. I have a single remote control (the Google TV one) for all of them. It changes channels and settings on my cable box with HDMI CEC.
All these new boxes make you switch inputs and remotes all the time. I have too many remotes already.
>> All these new boxes make you switch inputs and remotes all the time. I have too many remotes already.
The Chromecast can turn on a TV (and the TV can turn on the audio receiver) via HDMI CEC. I was surprised when the Chromecast icon was displayed when the TV was off. Lo and behold, it just worked.
An exciting (to me, at least) development is that OEMs are starting to produce sub-$100 HDMI sticks with Bay Trail-T CPUs and 16 GB–32 GB of eMMC storage inside. Assuming the firmware isn't crippled, those sticks should be able to run unmodified copies of any modern x86 operating system. On Linux and FreeBSD, there is stable, functional, non-proprietary GPU support, which is a huge win over the vast majority of ARM-based systems. (Even the "OPEN hardware and software platform" Matchstick is currently chained to a binary blob because of the Mali GPU. Maybe one day the reverse engineered Mali driver will be awesome, but it's not there yet.)
Watching Intel Mobile strategically over the next year or two will be very interesting indeed.
[1] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/INTC/3545134377x0x786...
I'm very interested in this, but it's the first I've heard of it, please can you share some examples? They sound like a great match for a Motorola Lapdock (I have one, but currently unused).
MEEGO-T01 HDMI TV Stick Supports Android, Windows 8.1, and Ubuntu/Linux http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/10/15/meego-t01-hdmi-tv-sti...
There are other models by other OEMs out there, but I can't find any URLs for them off-hand.
This is probably an old Moorefield-thingy to copy the Apple TV, like the Z3560. (which is sad considering that Bay Trail is available, but it probably wouldn't allow to have the same margins.)
[0] PDF(!): http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/...
Stares at the lack of Amazon Instant Video on Android and rolls eye. I stopped giving amazon money for videos and music until they have it on Android as they already have it on Fire, and iOS.
http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-com-Prime-Instant-Video/dp/B00N...
1. You can get Amazon Instant Video on your cellular tablet if you use the Amazon Appstore directly. It's kinda vague on the distinction between a cellular tablet and a phone.
2. Amazon Instant Video works just fine if you sideload the Amazon for Phones and Amazon Instant Video apps.
The pissing contest between vendors is ridiculous though. I vowed to stop using Google things until they quit being childish with Microsoft and Windows Phone. But all of Microsoft's apps work just fine on my iPhone. Amazon's not the only one who can be petty.
Android (minus Fire), on the other hand, has a huge install base, and it's ridiculous that Amazon Instant Video took so long to properly support that platform.
http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-com-Prime-Instant-Video/dp/B00N...
The whole UI feels very snappy, and videos load very quickly.
The game pad feels great in my hands. No complaints there.
The selection of games on Google Play isn't huge (yet?). I currently see 16 games listed on it for download/purchase. My favorite so far is Leo's Fortune. I enjoyed it on my Nexus 5 when it came out, but after playing it on Android TV, I won't even play it on the phone anymore because I've experienced how much better the game is with a controller. I suspect that's going to be the case with a lot of games that come out for Android in the future. Touch interface only games have a lot of limitations.
Besides Netflix, you can also use Plex (PlexPass subscribers only right now) and that works pretty flawlessly as well.
I've been very happy with the whole setup and I'll be recommending it to all who are in the market for a set top box.
Pretty much every mobile game I have ever tried has been a cesspool of micropayment dark patterns, or else something that really just serves to kill time when there is nothing else to do (riding the bus, waiting at an office, etc.)
And no doubt the Nexus Player will spur the development of new 'TV' games (or ones ported from Xbox and playstation)
Is there really a big market for this thing?
If you are a cord cutter this may be your new set top box.
It does not replace Google TV, as that is the third party vendor vertical. However Google TV could die if third parties see the Player as competition or are unable to get features in Player into their Google TV's.
To me the big failing of the Chromecast is families, where the kids will not necessarily own their own smartphone. This device comes with a bundled remote.
However, that's a huge change in the Android world because up until now every official Google Android-device has been touch-enabled. Switching to a remote control is very significant.
i can't think of anything this can do (that id want to do) that the chromecast cant for a lot cheaper.
Also, you'll probably be able to side-load xbmc on it without rooting, like you can on a Ouya, an Amazon FireTV or (rooted) AppleTV to get full access to your media library, to act as a PVR front end, & to give you access to the vast world of shady XBMC plugins.
The open question for me is what sort of video the thing will be able to play back natively. And whether or not you can side-load Amazon Instant Video
Also, it will run your Play Store apps. So, presumably GMail, Calendar, Drive, Maps... and not just the 'cast version of them, but the real deal.
The chromecast is a glorified wireless hdmi dongle.
Phone/tablet just setup the URL for the stream.
You can easily verified this by setup the chromecast to stream from youtube with a phone after it start play, you can turn off the phone and and it would still be playing.
The phone/table for chromecast is just a fancy remote control.
OUYA was almost dead. Now it's done.
I'm somewhat surprised there is no ethernet in this player. For some places, wifi just doesn't work in their environment.
You can solve this with a Chromecast plus a VGA to HDMI adapter with an audio jack input.
I've tried nearly every android TV stick, and while they are pretty close to what we need, and infinitely customizable, we had trouble getting consistent hardware. It seemed like each batch would behave slightly differently.
Is this just a case where Amazon got a reference implementation out the door before Google did?
There are even a few of them that have a hockey-puck appearance.
For disclosure, I should say I have and rather enjoy a FireTv. Not the most amazing device ever, but more than capable of what it is made to do. (And more to the point, does a good job by me.)
I hope this doesn't mean there backtracking on Chromecast.
I'll have to wait and see how the performance for the Google Cast is. I'd like it to at least be as good as my ability to airplay HD MKV files to an Apple TV.
I just don't get it. Does every company have to jump in head first to any emerging market just because the others are doing it?
The Android TV interface looks pretty sleek as well.
I'm not seeing how the Nexus Play is going to replace the R-Pi running XBMC.....
My initial take is that the Nexus Play is like paying $65 extra for a chromecast that has a remote. I realize there is more to it than that (due to it running full android) but for my use case that doesn't seem to matter much.
edit: ha... probably market limited.
Roku is dead, long live Roku.
On amazon, Roku 3 streaming player costs 90USD. So, it's the same price range. Except that Player will have more apps in no time.
(And from a developer perspective, Roku is using a custom language. You read that right, a DSL of their own)
Anyway, no one knows how this will play out, but Roku didn't kill Apple TV, FireTV didn't kill either, and I wouldn't expect this thing to do much damage in the very crowded market either, all things considered. Brand name doesn't mean that much these days, as Microsoft and Blackberry can tell you. What matters is how cool it is and how quick the adoption and lock-in is. Lots of people already have smart TVs, gaming consoles, or Apple TV/Roku devices.
It may even work outside the US without setting up a bunch of proxies and hacking your router! Yay!
And it can play games too, which I guess is a deal to some people.
But the Roku has wired ethernet and this has not, so for now my Roku not going anywhere.
I think this is just a rebranding to distance Android TV from the failure that was Google TV. I'm taking bets on what the name of the next revision will be when Android TV fails.
Chrome TV
Spotify and iPlayer are my favourites. Notably absent.
What? Are they exclusively targeting movie content with this? It doesn't make much sense to rent a movie if store apps don't have a feature I am looking for.