Google Chromecast

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But yeah, those guys. And it worked, FYI. The user interface on my ipod touch leaves something to be desired however. I have a ton of movies and tv shows and it is kind of pain to navigate them to play on the Chromecast.

The wife and I are taking our belated honeymoon in a month or so, and we'll be in a hotel for two weeks. The hotel should have a decent wifi connection available, so I was thinking about picking up one of these so that we have the option to watch Netflix on the TV instead of on the ipad. Has anyone had experience using these in hotels? Good, bad, otherwise?

Yeah, that's a little rough, and a sore spot for a me (and a lot of people) with Chromecast.

Because most hotels use an in browser authentication, it's nearly impossible to get Chromecast working on a hotel wifi. You can't just hook your Chromecast up to your computer or something and get it past the authentication... the Chromecast set up doesn't allow it. Let me know if you find a workaround, but for now traveling at hotels with the Chromecast just doesn't work.

Jolly Bill wrote:

Yeah, that's a little rough, and a sore spot for a me (and a lot of people) with Chromecast.

Because most hotels use an in browser authentication, it's nearly impossible to get Chromecast working on a hotel wifi. You can't just hook your Chromecast up to your computer or something and get it past the authentication... the Chromecast set up doesn't allow it. Let me know if you find a workaround, but for now traveling at hotels with the Chromecast just doesn't work.

If your phone can generate a 4G hotspot, that might take care of the problem, but you're potentially running into data caps there.

Well that's kind of a bummer. I can't remember if the place we're staying at has the browser authentication or not, but I suspect it does. Oh well, probably not worth getting it then.

I wonder when hotels will figure out that adding a way to access your Netflix account would be a huge win for a lot of guests.

Then again, hotels aren't super clever. I was at one a while ago that had a bluray player hooked up to the TV. It was hooked up via composite cables. Good thing they spent the extra for the bluray!

Would it be possible to connect to the hotel's network with your laptop and then create an adhoc network to connect your Chromecast to?

But if your laptop can virtualize it's wired hotel network connection and share it as a wireless hotspot in infrastructure mode (I think Chromecast doesn't support ad-hoc), then things should work.... Of course, it also means that since you're lugging around the laptop, you might as well just try connecting it to the hotel's TV directly.

Yeah, I don't have a laptop, so I'd be working the Chromecast from either a phone or ipad.

I suppose I could get a cable to hook up either the phone (galaxy s3) or ipad 2 to the TV, but none of those cables seem to be super cheap, and it'd be a pretty limited use case for me. If the Chromecast worked, I could hook it up to the upstairs TV for netflix as well.

Too bad, but thanks for letting me know before I dropped money on the thing.

Does the Chromecast have an Ethernet port? If so, and if your laptop also has one, you should be able to share the wireless connection to the Chromecast over Ethernet.

In other words: laptop connects to hotel network, Chromecast plugs into laptop. After laptop authenticates, it does NAT for the Chromecast so it can get out.

Most hotel networks I've used, however, have been very heavily loaded, unable to deliver video streams on a per-guest basis, at least in the evenings. There have been some that have been wonderful, but they're not that common.

Malor wrote:

Does the Chromecast have an Ethernet port?

It does not.

Malor wrote:

Does the Chromecast have an Ethernet port?

No.

Malor wrote:

Does the Chromecast have an Ethernet port? If so, and if your laptop also has one, you should be able to share the wireless connection to the Chromecast over Ethernet.

In other words: laptop connects to hotel network, Chromecast plugs into laptop. After laptop authenticates, it does NAT for the Chromecast so it can get out.

The Chromecast does not have Ethernet.

However, this same solution is workable by having two wireless network adapters, and a second adapter is easily added via a USB device.

I have done this to share a connection with my Roku. Laptop connects to hotel wifi and authenticates, then shares Internet connection with devices in the room through the second wifi adapter.

Another approach: many of these capture portals are based on MAC addresses. Clone your Chromecast's MAC address on your computer, log into wifi, and then use the Chromecast.

You could get a travel router, connect it to the hotel wifi, then connect the Chromecast to it. I think that lets you do the authentication done on the router. Those aren't generally that expensive.

And I am uninstalling Real Player Cloud!

EriktheRed wrote:

Would it be possible to connect to the hotel's network with your laptop and then create an adhoc network to connect your Chromecast to?

I theory this works; my wife made the offhand comment that hotels are charging extra for streaming. Has anyone heard anything similar? seems hotels now offer "regular" internet and "streaming" as separate things.

Hobbes2099 wrote:
EriktheRed wrote:

Would it be possible to connect to the hotel's network with your laptop and then create an adhoc network to connect your Chromecast to?

I theory this works; my wife made the offhand comment that hotels are charging extra for streaming. Has anyone heard anything similar? seems hotels now offer "regular" internet and "streaming" as separate things.

I've not seen it called streaming specifically, but I've seen it called "high speed". Kind of annoying. Glad I have unlimited data and can use my 4G connection from Sprint if I need it.

Now that the SDK is out; where are the iOS apps?! I could use other options for steaming aside from flex.

I hope VLC comes out with a release that can send to Chromecast.

EriktheRed wrote:

And I am uninstalling Real Player Cloud!

Our work here is done.

So to clarify why I uninstalled Real Player Cloud: I have a huge video library of movies and tv shows, probably around 3000-4000 files. I keep things relatively organized, my folder structure for TV shows is TV\Show name\Season\Show name - SXEX - Episode Title - Quality.

So I drag my top level movie and TV folders into the Real Player cloud program on my computer for it to index them. That works well enough. I then install the app on my iPod Touch. I can see my desktop on the iPod, so far, so good. Unfortunately it seems to want to put every single file and folder in one giant list. Sorting by name forces me to scroll through every single damned file to find the file or folder I want, including dozens and dozens of folders called "Season 1", "Season 2", "Season 3" with no context. Sorting by date is super haphazard and still a pain to find my files. There is a search function, but for some reason it wants to show me all of the random-assed videos other people have uploaded to their service instead of my own. There is no way to just search my files. There is a function called "Collections". I thought, "maybe I'll just make a collection of some of the shows and movies I want to watch in the near future." So I drag a few folders/files into a collection. The program then starts to upload these 10gigs of files to its cloud service, ugh.

I was able to play some of my local files on my Chromecast, but it was a huge PITA, and the program kept crashing when I tried to scroll through the thousands of files to find the ones I wanted.

I think for the time being I am just going to get an HDMI cable and play my networked files from my laptop until I get around to making an HTPC.

I have almost 1000 video files and many more photos and I found that Plex works great both over the web and through my Chromecast.

I assume you've tried Plex and didn't like? Sorry if we've covered this already

MannishBoy wrote:

Glad I have unlimited data and can use my 4G connection from Sprint if I need it.

As always, I'm getting ahead of myself, and getting concerned for when I travel to the US; where roaming charges would kill me.

Spoiler:

Would kill the company I work for. The company would in turn, fire me. Then my wife would kill me.

groan wrote:

I have almost 1000 video files and many more photos and I found that Plex works great both over the web and through my Chromecast.

I assume you've tried Plex and didn't like? Sorry if we've covered this already

I am aware of Plex, but it was my understanding that I had to pay some sort of monthly fee to use it to stream to my Chromecast. If that is not the case, I will definitely give it a go.

EriktheRed wrote:
groan wrote:

I have almost 1000 video files and many more photos and I found that Plex works great both over the web and through my Chromecast.

I assume you've tried Plex and didn't like? Sorry if we've covered this already

I am aware of Plex, but it was my understanding that I had to pay some sort of monthly fee to use it to stream to my Chromecast. If that is not the case, I will definitely give it a go.

Plex App for Android is $5.00, iOS version can also broadcast to Chromecast (or mirror Apple TV) but it also costs.

Plex's has a monthly paywall, which currently advances beta features.

I would encourage you to give it a try.

But you do not need the advanced beta features to stream content from a networked drive to the Chromecast via an iOS device?

I will gladly pay $5 if that is the case.

I can't remember if I needed to pay for the feature or not.
I'd suggest trying it without first and if you do need to then you can test it out for a month.

My understanding was that it was initially needed but they would remove the requirement to be premium after they get through the development cycle.

Pay to play now.

I'll go to the googles and see if I can find details.

Plex just updated their iOS app. Streaming to ChromeCast is now free!

PaladinTom wrote:

Plex just updated their iOS app. Streaming to ChromeCast is now free!

And it works perfectly!

I share my library with a friend and my wife so I'm keeping the premium. I'm doing monthly at the moment but at some point I'll pay the lifetime fee and be done with the monthly payments.

EriktheRed wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

Plex just updated their iOS app. Streaming to ChromeCast is now free!

And it works perfectly!

I am now officially on the Plex bandwagon.

I've played a coupe things through Chrome and hit the cast extension but I would have to click play and run up a floor to watch. It also had some stutter problems and some file formats just wouldn't work. I will now gladly lay the $5 for the plex app.

Does anyone know of a good Android app that can stream any audio or video to the Chromecast?

I'm thinking of adding a cheap tablet as a control center in my living room, but I'd like to be able to stream anything to it from apps that don't yet support the Chromecast natively.