Readying itself for the likes of Chromecast, PlayStation 4 (already on PS3), Google TV, and more, YouTube has been updated this week in its iOS and Android forms. This app already allowed the user to play any and all (save no-mobile) videos with ease, now the app will allow users to watch a video or […]
Earlier this year Google’s Chromcast device became (rather quickly) one of their biggest hardware hits, selling out not long after it was first put on sale. Almost as quickly, developer Koushik Dutta began work on prospective apps for the device, aiming to expand the functionality of the miniature HDMI-friendly dongle to allow more than Google’s […]
Chromecast is great, except for the part where your streaming options are pretty limited. They’re getting better by the day
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When Google first introduced their Chromecast device sometime last month with a $35 price tag slapped to it, you could very well say that this is one device which is too good to be true. Well, it does seem as though this HDMI dongle has been pretty popular since its release, and right now as you read this, the Google Play store has listed a two to three week wait for shipments of the Chromecast for those who have already placed their order. The Chromecast is useful since it functions as a streaming middleman of sorts, helping stream content such as YouTube, Netflix and other compatible services from a tablet or smartphone to a big screen TV. It seems that there is more to the Chromecast than meets the eye, as a a programmer has figured out a way to control Chromecast apps on a TV using the Kinect for Windows SDK.
Thanks to Leon Nicholls, who happens to be a software engineer in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, has shown the world his Chromecast-Kinect experiment as you can see above in all of its video glory. A video app was depicted to be streamed to the TV via Chromecast, with the Kinect sensor being connected to a nearby laptop. A special program that Nicholls wrote can interpret the sensor data from the Kinect, taking a few seconds for such data to be sent to the app that runs on the Chromecast. With this, you can use the Kinect to move the video on the screen, and pushing in your hand will result in pausing or resuming the video. Neat, no?
Kinect Used To Control Chromecast original content from Ubergizmo. 
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ClockworkMod dev Koushik Dutta has teased us with a few interesting ways to get our own media streaming on Chromecast, but now he’s actually releasing one to the public. AirCast runs on your Android device and streams video from the gallery, Dropbox or Google Drive to Google dongle, with playback controls available in the app or from the notification bar. So why is this ready for release now? According to the developer, he’s reverse engineered the protocols and is no longer using the SDK. Still, the app is just in testing now and he warns that the button doesn’t appear in gallery apps on some devices, including the HTC One. It will stop working on its own after a couple of days while Dutta works the kinks out, look below for links to the download or more information, and check out a video demo after the break.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD, Mobile, Google
Chromecast may deliver on promises of sending wire-free video to TVs, but it’s not hands-free — or at least, it wasn’t. Leon Nicholls has unveiled a homemade Kinect app for the desktop that gives him gesture-based control of videos playing through Google’s streaming stick. While there’s just two commands at this point, Nicholls hopes to open-source the code in the near future; this isn’t the end of the road. If you can’t wait that long, though, there’s a quick demonstration available after the break.
Update: A few days later, Nicholls has posted the source code for his project; you’ll need to whitelist your Chromecast for development to use it.
Filed under: HD, Microsoft, Google
Source: Leon Nicholls (Google+)
As the device known as Chromecast gains steam, an ecosystem is being expanded around it. Google’s intended purpose for Chromecast was to make connecting Google apps and services – not to mention their Android software on devices galore – to displays of all sizes, specifically in the television realm. Just weeks after the initial launch […]
If you failed to snap up a Chromecast
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Glowing Chromecast reviews have come in from all angles, but what if you didn’t get an order in and missed out on the sold-out dongles? If you have an Android 2.2 (or higher) device you can give its features a whirl using an app called Cheapcast. Designed to mimic Google’s $35 dongle, it instantly gives a phone or tablet the ability to stream from Chromecast-enabled apps to other devices on the same WiFi network. If the device acting as a receiver has a small screen, you can also connect it to a TV with no WiFi via an HDMI cable. Cheapcast’s Google Play page warns that since it’s at the early stages, it can’t display Chrome tabs, and some of its other functions might still be on the fritz. It’s free to download, though, so there’s nothing keeping you from trying it out — it might even quench your desire to get a Chromecast, if only for a while.
Filed under: HD
Via: AndroidCommunity
Source: Cheapcast (Google Play)
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
Sold out for weeks after its launch, everyone seems to be in love with the Chromecast — the ultra-cheap, ultra-small, interface-free, HDMI-toting TV appendage that stole the show from the new Nexus 7. Building beyond the DIAL device-discovery protocol that Netflix and YouTube have supported, Chromecast is a client of Google Cast, which enables the kind of second-screen control for volume and other features implemented by the device.
Google has gotten the jump on similar products such as the Plair TV dongle by natively supporting three of the most popular services to use on televisions — Netflix, YouTube and Pandora. Furthermore, it has also enabled a backdoor to many other services by building in support for displaying Chrome tabs on a Chromecast-connected TV. In doing so, it treats the TV as an extension of the browser just as Apple’s forthcoming OS X Mavericks can treat an Apple TV-connected set as another Macintosh screen.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Google
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