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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

I was an enthusiastic early adopter of Chromecast. I hated it, and now use a Roku. I share my television with my girlfriend, I don't want to have to set up Netflix, Amazon, Hulu etc. on both our phones and have us manually 'cast' to the screen.

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.

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Wow, I'm shocked at how opposite I feel about this. I already had Netflix setup on my phone so casting is no problem (I didn't realize Amazon already works to cast, I guess I'll set that up tonight).

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.

When I'm by myself browsing by phone is fine. But when we're discussing what Movie to watch I'd have to read what I'm looking at to her, etc. etc. - the two of you looking at the same screen is 1000% better.

And casting through Netflix was painful in itself. So slow. But maybe that was just my phone/setup somehow.

Ditto. Also unlocking your phone. Rewinding/Fast-forwarding on your phone. It's all so slow. And for me at least, it feels like there's a 50/50 chance if I seek in a video it'll just break the stream, I'll have to close the Youtube app entirely, and try again.

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.

It is not actually Google Cast but hooks into the same UI for Youtube. Casting Youtube is pretty robust.

We cast our screens when talking about what to watch. But, I agree with you that that part of the experience is clunkier than Roku. On the flip side, the ability to stream anything is fantastic, and I think makes up for that deficiency.

You can now cast your entire screen from more recent phones.

Yeah, that is a lot better. But when I tried it, the casting stopped when I turned off my phone screen. Is that the case for all devices or just my weird setup?

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