You must log in or register to comment.
Of course they are.
Google’s gonna Google
Add another casualty to the list:
They aren’t really, they are just upgrading it to a full set top box and rebranding it.
🙄 it’s as dead as the Nexus. Try to keep up.
I just came to comment this exact string.
In place of the Chromecast, the company will offer the newly announced $99.99 Google TV Streamer,
They’re replacing it with a very similar product. Nothing to see here.
A more expensive, clunkier product, with a bunch of needless fluff in it.
Enshitification 101
You mean twice the ram (1 gig more than the shield), 4 times the storage (32 gigs), and a better remote (chirping find my remote feature, programmable button, and less shitty volume buttons)?
Yep. Sure sounds worse considering it also supports all the same features of the chromecast 4k and AV1 decoding.
My Chromecast has no storage and no remote. It’s fine.
Cool. Keep using it.
until they decide that their new device needs more sales, so they depricate the protocol and you can’t use it anymore
Deprecate the casting protocol? Sure Jan. The new device still supports casting.
They killed support for the first gen Chromecast and the YouTube “app” has been broken for 3+ years. They’ll just stop supporting it one day and you’ll have to buy a new one.
You haven’t been paying attention to Google in the last few years, have you?
Chromecast ultras are already broken if you try to use your own DNS.
Until services stop supporting it.
None of which changes the fact that it’s more expensive and clunkier, and none of which feels necessary.
Most of the appeal of the Chromecast is that it’s a dongle you plug in once and never have to see again. It doesn’t need high performance and 32 gigs of RAM. It needs to play video. That’s its entire purpose. It’s controlled by any phone on your wifi, it doesn’t need a remote.
For most users, this is an expensive downgrade.
The remote was the biggest upgrade for me on the Ultra though. I always struggled to find my phone and do stuff on it just to watch some YouTube or Netflix videos. And the Kids don’t even have a phone and they want to watch on the TV in the livingroom too sometimes. With the remote it’s easy for everyone to use it without fiddling with the Phone.
My parents have the one without the remote and they basically never use it because my mom doesn’t have a mobile phone and my dad newer has it with him, it’s always not charged or in some other room.
It’s controlled by any phone on your wifi, it doesn’t need a remote.
Or you can use it’s remote and not need to use your phone for absolutely every little thing.
I don’t need any of that. I just need a cheap dongle that can run one app
The dongle still works. They reached market saturation with people who just want a dongle. They can’t realistically be expected to produce these forever.
Edit
Classic Lemmy. Point out that these are not charities and companies can’t keep producing niche products that you aren’t buying but maybe potentially want to buy someday and get thrown down votes. Sorry folks whether you like it or not it’s the truth. Companies like to sell things and if these were actually being bought enough to make a profit they wouldn’t be discontinued. Your TV probably has this feature built in now. Want another? Buy it second hand, the market is absolutely flooded with these second hand because they’re just collecting dust in cabinets. If Google kept making these they’d just end up as unsold stock in a landfill.
Your existing chromecast dongle will continue to connect because Google needs chromecast the protocol to continue to work to compete with Apples Airplay. It’s the same reason the Chromecast Audio dongle continues to work 5 years after it’s end of life.
If you want to make sure you have them forever buy up your local second hand stock but otherwise no one has given a convincing argument why these need to keep getting produced at the factory.
So when the current dongle breaks and you just want another, what do you buy?
Facebook market place in my small town has dozens of these for less than $20. Why don’t you pick up a few of these and recycle our current supply instead of asking companies to produce more e waste incase we someday want to buy it.
The large used market exists because Google has been producing them. When Google stops producing them, that supply will dry up.
I mean I’d hope so because eventually this one I have won’t work like the previous one so I’d like a similar product when that happens not this 99 dollar box thing. I guess I hope someone else will continue making cheap dongles I think walmart has their own thing
Facebook marketplace is absolutely loaded with these for less than $20. Let’s recycle the existing stock.
And ethernet port!
Yes! I hadn’t seen that highlighted anywhere in articles really, only saw it on the damn Google Store after looking just now.
Seems an all around solid update on the previous device.
Just gotta stick FLauncher, SmartTube, Jellyfin, and Stremio on it and it seems solid.
You can get an Ethernet adapter for the Chromecast
Regular Chromecast work perfectly as YouTube jukebox.
What do you mean regular Chromecast?
What do you mean regular Chromecast?
Just regular Chromecast, not that Google TV stuff. That round dongle that does nothing but accept casting streams via that cast button in many Android apps.
So the one from 2013? Sure. It was fine for that. This is a different thing, as not every device, service, or whatever supports casting. I wish they did, but they don’t.
Secondarily, I don’t want to use a screen to control a screen. I prefer a physical remote that I can have muscle memory for.
But I get why people liked the device. I did too. But fortunately or unfortunately, it’s been 10 years and technology has moved. Which is probably why they are giving this a new name being an generally good upgrade on the last Chromecast 4K.
Christ, this one even has a built in Ethernet port and doesn’t put strain on my HDMI port by just dangling there.
So the one from 2013? Sure. It was fine for that. This is a different thing, as not every device, service, or whatever supports casting. I wish they did, but they don’t.
Well, the story is about Google ending that line of products.
Yeah, I have a smart TV and would appreciate some faster processing in there. Or if I can flash a simplified ROM, but dunno if those exist. As long as I get control over what it does, I’d take it. Can just Velcro it on the back of the TV so it’s invisible.
They’re supposedly using pretty much the same chipset. So the most important part is still underpowered, these Android boxes generally work fine even with 2-3GBs of RAM.
From OP article
such as a processor that’s 22 percent faster
It’s supposed to use S905X3 with ARM Cortex-A55.
There’s already plenty of devices on the market with this chip, and it’s fine, but in real world as a user you won’t really see any improvement over something like a nearly 10 year old Nvidia Shield that’s still using a more powerful chipset.
Which is sad for a new device…
For which they will be able to offer subscriptions in a year or 2.
Now with AI!
I’m not sure why they didn’t just call it the chrome cast gen whatever though.
So you could just ask it for anything and it could make it up?
“Google, show ‘Ow! My Balls!’”
I wonder how far away we are from AI being able to create video on demand like that?
I think overall it’ll never be able to create quality entertainment.
But Ow! My Balls! isn’t quality entertainment. I’m sure it can create all kinds of clips of things smashing into groins for ultra low-brow entertainment. Probably today.
Shitposting is one area where I have no issues using AI.
Similar product that costs 4 times as much and has AI features…
The low-power streaming box is dying. It’s not completely without reason, 4k playback is actually a bit demanding.
We are in a place where the 2017 nVidia Shield is beginning to show its age and that leaves the AppleTV as the only powerful and capable consumer set top box on the market. This new option from Google will at least provide some competition and an option outside of Apple’s ecosystem.
I cannot believe NVIDIA has essentially abandoned its SHIELD micro console line. My Shield Pro has been an amazing sideloading fiend.
I absolutely love mine, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t stutter sometimes when asked to perform more demanding tasks. The chip is also going to start having issues with formats in the coming years. I’d love for nVidia to put out something that used a rival to the A15 in Apple’s box. Native AV1 decoding and just raw speed is really needed to catch up to use cases in 2024 compared to 7 years earlier.
and before that they already replaced it with google tv with chromecast
They’re replacing it with a very similar product. Nothing to see here.
Like they do with messengers every couple of years.
Or music streaming apps.
Seemed monthly at one point 🤣
I feel the original Chromecast was probably the last truly great original Google product, it was simple, it was inexpensive and it worked - you just plugged it in, joined your network and you were off, there really wasn’t anything like it at the time.
I really hate what they’ve become.
What’s funny is that was actually the start of them becoming who they are now. There’s a litany of evidence they stole the Chromecast technology
What changed? I thought that is still what they did.
Chromecast with Google TV made the “simple” casting worse for some apps like Netflix. Instead of it casting directly, it would spawn the Netflix app and make you use the remote to reselect the show you wanted to see.
Also they made it reliant on the Google Home app, which makes it really hard to change WiFi networks. It’s a pain in the ass if you have multiple WiFi networks setup at your house.
I feels like they either badly copy (see Gemini) or don’t think about what they’re offering (see Stadia’s busted business model) they’re content to milk the existing services they’ve already got and make them worse by cramming in more ads (see YouTube, Google’s search result pages) and they cut out or dictate the web through their monopolies (see AMP and Chrome) rather than working with other parties to make good products.
They feel like Hooli in Silicon Valley, basically the definition of a fat tech giant who doesn’t do any innovation of their own.
Badly copy (see Gemini)
Tf are you smoking dude, Google has been working on AI long before ChatGPT was a twinkle in Sam Altman’s eye. They didn’t release any public models because they wanted to go about it safely and not just dump the world’s best misinformation creator on the open market for anyone to use with little safeguards. All that went out the window when ChatGPT got all the press and google decided they wanted a piece of the hype, but pretending they “didn’t do any innovation of their own” in regards to AI is ludicrous. They have been at the forefront of AI development for the last decade, and the fact you think otherwise shows your only knowledge about AI is from after ChatGPT headlines started coming out.
“Yes I know the customer learned that product name and has a good connotation with it, but how about we change the name to something completely different?”
“Our current product offering is less than $50. We were thinking the next iteration should be $300”
Me - Ok Google, give me a open source way to turn my raspberry pi into a 4k streaming box.
Google - Got it. Playing Tyler Swift on living room tv
Me - wtf?
RIP to a real one.
Back in the day when streaming was cheap as hell and made sense as all things were on Netflix, having a Home Mini with and a Chromecast was bliss.
I used to have a shortcut for the phrase “I’m so tired”, it would start playing Star Trek TNG from Netflix on the Chromecast monitor and it just werked. Saved me from a bad trip once too, I was really uncomfortable on 135ug so in a desperate attempt to hold onto reality I said “alexa…uhmm…uh…hey google play RoboCop” and it just worked.
Only thing is it played the wrong RoboCop (2014) but that only distracted me from spiraling further, like “hold up Samuel L Jackson was in this?”
It feels weird to say but I was a genuinely happy customer. Then the home mini stopped working as well, started triggering by itself, didn’t hear words right, then the Chromecast had trouble updating firmware and rebooting. Then Netflix platformed that douchebag chapelle.
Now all that’s left of it is the pihole I used to block ads for it.
Another one for the graveyard
I’m waiting for Gmail, it has to be soon :)
No the NSA, CIA, FBI and all the other alphabet agencies would never allow it.
Alphabet agencies and Alphabet companies.
Name a more iconic duo
Literally all my friends know the name “Chromecast”, why would you rename it
Why does Google do any of the dumb shit they do?
To justify the salaries of their product managers
On another news “Why is everyone hating google now?” lol
Really, rebranding from Chromecast to Google TV Streamer? Who the fuck was the genius that greenlighted this?
I knew someone who worked at a really well loved local restaurant. One day a new manager came in and IMMEDIATELY wanted to change the name. According to him, you should change a restaurant’s name every 2 years
Why would you ruin the recognition you already have? He was also planning on changing the name to be the exact same as a business down the street. I think he was an idiot
“Give this man a raise and promotion” – some MBA somewhere
they make 6.1 million dollars per day for their executive savvy
Hmm, so, last month I began to have issues with my Chromecast for the first time. I have an old 3rd gen Chromecast attached to my bedroom television (not a smart tv) for the purpose of casting obnoxiously long video essays to fall asleep to. After like a decade of essentially hassle free operation, it suddenly stopped being able to maintain a connection to my phone. I cast a video, and after approximately 10 minutes, the cast disconnects and I get a message on my phone saying “this video cannot be played in the background”. I’ve tried ever troubleshooting technique I can think of.
I know I shouldn’t attribute to malice what can be explained by other causes, but boy, seeing this news today sure makes me think about things like planned obsolescence.
Planned obsolescence is built into googles processes.
They’ve created an environment where your primary method of advancing in your career is only creating new things and there’s little to no options when choosing to support existing things. Some things have survived by chance and/or something to keep employees busy, but it’s unintentional.
I have had the exact issue. I see a device disconnected message on my TV and typically give up.
I guess onn is going to completely take over the low price streaming box market then.
The Chromecast was one of the few things I really liked made by Google. I always have one in my travel bag and it’s basically like bringing your own home theater to the hotel with you. I had a time where I lived in hotels and AirBnB’s for almost a year and this thing was god send.
They have some other device which they want to sell which will replace it, but that one is big and clunky, not meant for traveling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSSI_Ht6Mis
Dammit. I like it for the same reason. Why does Google keep doing this?
well, it’s just in their DNA. institutional inertia is a helluva drug!
I take my raspberry pi 400 with me ($70). I don’t like to travel with expensive things. Once connected to a hotel tv, i have a full pc. I watch movies in 720p to have more fps. In case I have something important to do but no TV, I vnc to my phone.
A new entry to https://killedbygoogle.com/?
Eh, not really. This product had a full run, will continue to work and the features are all still available in their newer products. Killed by Google usually implies they have a service that just ceases to exist.
