David Briddock explains how to get more from your Chromecast
In July 2013 Google released a small, thumb-drive sized HDMI device that quickly leapt to the top of the sales charts. Called the Chromecast, this £30 device brought the world of online streaming media to any television with an HDMI socket, and it promised desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone owners an affordable wireless big-screen experience.
Inside
For £30, or $35 in the US, you might not expect all that much from a Chromecast dongle, and it’s true that many buyers settle on for using a relatively small list of Android and Apple iOS mobile apps like YouTube, Netflix and iPlayer – while desktop and laptop PC owners cast the contents of a their Chrome browser tabs, but not much else.
However, underneath that diminutive case there’s a surprising amount of power. Inside a Chromecast dongle there’s a mini system-on-a-chip processor, with 512MB of RAM and 2GB of flash storage, and a hardware-based decoder delivers smooth video experience at 1080p HDMI. Taken together this little package is enough to run a simplified version of Chrome OS, similar to what you’d find on a Chromebook laptop or Chromebox desktop. And it’s the inclusion of this highly capable and well understood operating system that delivers so much potential. Most importantly it has a built-in wi-fi module, complete with tiny antennas, which communicate bidirectionally with the home’s wi-fi router and nearby PCs, smartphones and tablets. These computing devices can then act as a smart remote television controller using the CEC standard.
With all this capability wrapped up in the diminutive Chromecast case there’s lots of potential to improve and extend the user experience. Here are a few tips, tricks and app suggestions to unlock the true potential of your Chromecast.
Second-Generation Chromecast
In 2015, around two years after the initial release, Google announced the second incarnation of its Chromecast dongle. This new version has superior video streaming performance thanks to an upgraded internal dual-band wi-fi router and improvements in the wireless antenna array.
Chromecast 2 is easily identified by its round case and short flat HDMI cable. It also comes in three colours; yellow, black, and red. The short cable avoids the issues some owners had with inconvenient HMDI socket locations. This round design also mirrors its sister Cast dongle, which enables your audio system to receive and play streamed audio content.
Smoother Wireless Video Casting
The Chromecast dongle works best when it’s streaming content directly from the Internet and your smartphone or tablet is acting as a remote control. When you’re using the ‘Cast’ Chrome extension to mirror browser tabs things aren’t quite so reliable. Why is this? Well, with natively supported sites like YouTube, Netflix and iPlayer the file is played directly through Chromecast. However, play a video from a cast Chrome browser tab and the host computer has to act as a web server, streaming the content to the Chromecast device. Thus, when tab casting, the audio can fall out of sync with the video, depending on the strength of the wireless network and the host computer’s power.
If this happens to you, try downgrading the video quality of the stream. Open the Options menu and set the ‘projection quality’ item to Standard (480p). While the video won’t look quite as sharp, at least it’ll be watchable.
Direct Connect Option
If you encounter the sort of casting problems mentioned above, but don’t want to sacrifice video quality, there’s another option. Google also sell an ethernet adapter Chromecast accessory, available for £15 from the Google Play store website (goo.gl/CPTxAS).
This ethernet adapter looks very similar to the Chromecast power cord, but in this case the plug end includes a small Ethernet port. This means you can connect it directly to your router using a standard ethernet cable and bypass any wi-fi performance issues.
Maintain Full-screen Video Mode
When you send a video from your phone or tablet to Chromecast, you’re free to close the app and do other things at the same time. But when using the Chrome browser on your PC to watch a video you’ll need keep the tab running in full screen mode at all times, or else it won’t appear in full screen on the television.
A workaround for Windows users is to use the Alt+Tab shortcut to switch to another app. This allows the video to play in full screen mode while you do something else. To return to the video click on the Chrome window tab in the taskbar. Mac or Linux users can do something similar using their multiple desktop switching functionality.
Stream Local Files
Chromecast doesn’t always have to stream its content straight from the Internet. Instead cast a Chrome browser tab on a Windows/Mac/Linux PC or Chromebook then browse and open local files to stream them to the big screen.
On a Windows PC open a new tab then enter ‘file:///C:/’ in the address bar. For a Mac it’s a similar process except this time enter ‘file://localhost/User/my-user-name’ in the address bar (replacing my-user-name with your login name).
Cast this newly opened tab then open any Chrome-supported file type (.mp3, mp4, and so on) to see it on the big screen.
Try The Beta Extension
Google’s standard Chromecast extension is somewhat limited in functionality. And the options aren’t exactly overwhelming either, limited to just video resolution settings.
However, true to Google tradition, there’s a Beta version of the official extension. This includes a number of extra goodies to explore, accessed via an extended ‘Options’ menu. But remember, as it’s in Beta what’s on offer is classed as experimental, so some features may be a little rough around the edges.
One option is the ‘Cast to Hangouts’ switch, which presents your Chrome tab or window to a Google Hangout. Of course, you will need to be signed in to Google to take advantage of this capability. Google has provided a handy webpage to help with Hangout Casting setup and information, including Google Calendar scheduling (goo.gl/TJT7jS).
You can also mirror the complete desktop through Chromecast, rather than just a single browser tab. This opens up a huge new set of functionality. For example you could play media via desktop apps like iTunes, Spotify and VLC. Or share full-screen photo slideshows and display PowerPoint presentations. To optimise the user experience there are settings for things like display resolution, frame rate and latency.
There’s also a toggle to enable Cloud Settings, though you’ll need to be signed into Chrome to take advantage of these features. The developer community hasn’t been forgotten, either, they can popup a cast activity log window and set additional receiver IP addresses.
Try Other Chrome Extensions
Chrome browser extensions are built using standard HTML5, CSS and JavaScript technology and tools. This has encouraged many thousands to develop their own Chrome customisations. There’s loads of extensions to try. Popular topics are image slideshows, music streaming, TV shows, radio players, note takers, todo lists, diary managers, and social communication. Many significantly enhance the Chromecast experience.
To see the full list of Chromecast-related browser extensions visit goo.gl/ozH2KP.
Try Other Apps
Android and iOS smartphone owners get polished YouTube, iPlayer and Netflix apps, but did you know there’s many more mobile Chromecast apps on offer? They include All 4 (Channel 4), Spotify, YouTube Kids, HBO Now, Google Slides and DailyBurn and even a Chromebox-enabled Remote Desktop app.
Quality varies quite a bit, so you’ll have to be prepared to be disappointed at times, or happy to follow the download-try-remove app cycle.
To see a list of these apps visit goo.gl/QwNsD8.
Play Games
If it’s entertainment you’re after then a Chromecast can simulate a game console experience. Just download a games to your Google Android or Apple iOS smartphone/tablet, then use this device as a game controller while the game runs on your TV.
Unfortunately, this functionality doesn’t work with every game you’ll come across, but only with certain Chromecastenabled ones. Still there’s a sizeable section to choose from, over 100 in fact (goo.gl/4EPKF6). Popular choices include the trivia knowledge quiz Jeopardy, Just Dance 2015 and retro-style fun games like Sonic Jump Fever.
Android Screen Mirroring
A display mirroring feature, similar to the PC desktop mirroring we mentioned above, is also available to Android smartphone owners. It appears as a ‘Cast Screen’ entry in the Options menu.
The ability to view your Android apps on the big screen is a great feature, and it offers gamers a radically different experience to a small handheld display. However, at the moment, it’s only available on certain devices installed with Android 4.4.2 or a later editions of the operating system.
Download Chromecast Wallpaper
When the Chromecast dongle is powered up but isn’t casting anything it defaults to a scenic wallpaper slideshow, plus some casting-specific text. These wallpapers look pretty impressive despite being only 720 pixel resolution JPG files.
One enterprising member of the XDA-Developers forum has grabbed a selection of these images and created a zip file. To download the zip point your browser at goo.gl/CK7mcN.
Code A Web App
At launch Chromecast worked natively with YouTube, Netflix and a few others but, as we mentioned earlier, casting Flash videos from other websites via the Crome tab cast feature can result in a poor user experience. To help this situation in February 2014 Google announced the public availability of a Chromecast application programming interface (API) for developers. In fact there were three APIs in total, one for Google’s Chrome OS (version 28+), plus ones for Google Android (version 2.3+) and Apple iOS (version 6.0+).
Using these APIs developers can now create ‘Sender’ apps that cast contents directly to the display, bypassing the ‘Google Cast’ scenario. These apps need a pre-defined receiver app that’s hosted by the Chromecast dongle, but you don’t need to create one of these as Google provide a number of ready-to-go examples you could employ.
What does creating a Sender app entail? Well, in reality it’s just a Chrome extension. In other words you just need a small manifest text file that describes the app, plus some basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript code. These are combined into a single CRX file (which is actually just a ZIP file).
The official Google Chromecast Developer site at developers.google.com/cast has a number of editable app examples, from a simple ‘Hello World’ to more useful media streaming ones. What’s more, you don’t need anything special to begin. Any PC will do – whether it’s running Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X or just about any flavour of Linux. You can code with a simple text editor, such as Notepad or vi, or a full development tool environment if you prefer. Then just download a Sender app sample and edit it to make it your own.
A more detailed explanation of the process can be found at Matthew Fuller’s blog (goo.gl/sArgqC).
Code A Sender App
As we said above the SDKs also have Android and iOS support. What this means is that mobile developers can integrate Chromecast support directly into their Android and iOS applications, as a so called ‘Sender App’.
A sender app first discovers all the various receiver devices in the area, before it casts content to the one chosen – in this case it would be the wi-fi router inside the target Chromecast dongle. During initialisation a small receiver code block is sent to the receiver device. The app developer can choose which type of receiver to use for their content. At this point a cast icon becomes visible in the host mobile app. Click on this icon and the smartphone or tablet becomes a ‘Cast’ remote control. Now the host app can perform its encoded functionality and display the results as text, buttons, images and media content directly on to the big screen.
Code A Receiver App
If you are a more experienced developer you might like to try coding a receiver app. It’s still an HTML5/CSS/JavaScript app, but this time it runs on the receiver device, in other words the Chromecast dongle itself.
A receiver application does two key tasks. It defines the display interface for the big-screen content, and it handles message flow between the sender apps and the receiver device. These messages can be general or app-specific.
There are two types of receiver app. A Styled Media Receiver is a pre-built receiver application that provides a default media player user interface for audio and video content. By editing the associated CSS file you can customise specific elements of this user interface.
If you’d rather have full control then you’ll need to develop a Custom Receiver app. This time you’re free to define the full user interface and display additional types of content in addition to audio/video media. For full instructions visit Google’s developer page at developers.google.com/cast/docs/receiver_apps.
Note that anyone intending to create either a Styled Media Receiver and Custom Receiver must register their application to receive a unique app identification code. This ID is then used when making API calls. In addition developers must also register a Google Cast device in order to enable app uploading. To see the full details of what’s needed to get your app up and running visit developers.google.com/cast/docs/registration.
Wrapping Up
Straight out of the box the Google Chromecast dongle is great value for money, and wireless casting is far more convenient than connecting a long HDMI cable to the back of the TV.
But, as you’ve seen, you can extract even more value from your £30 purchase. It can do a whole lot more than just stream video from YouTube and Netflix, or view browser tabs on the big screen. Try out a few tricks or develop your own app and the return on your investment just gets better and better.