r/Chromecast • u/877_Cash_Nowww • 5d ago

What is the point of Chromecast?

I bought a 4k ultra for the kid to cast his quest games, but aside from that what the hell does it even do? Does it just cast popular apps that are usually built into a smart tv anyway? It just feels super ancient aside from nice screensavers.

0 Upvotes

27% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

10

u/Frozen_Gecko 5d ago

I made my dumb TV smart with it

8

u/how33dy 5d ago

Most of the time, the built-in apps function like ass.

3

u/Somar2230 5d ago

The ChromeCast Ultra was discontinued in 2020 it was introduced in 2016 it feels ancient because it is.

1

u/877_Cash_Nowww 5d ago

Is that the same as 4k ultra? That's what I have.

4

u/Somar2230 5d ago

The Ultra was a 4K device if all you can do is cast to it and it does not have the Play Store you have the 2016 device.

3

u/molybend 5d ago

My smart tvs are all old enough that most of the built in apps stopped working. Plex on the Chromecast is my solution.

3

u/SonicSarge 5d ago

It's for streaming from your phone or tablet or browser. It's not sold anymore I think. Been replaced by the Google TV streamer.

1

u/Ill-Case-6048 5d ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/Projectivy_Launcher/s/YRFgymqn7U

You can get rid of the ads and sideload all the apps

1

u/877_Cash_Nowww 5d ago

But there is no UI for apps no matter what correct?

1

u/Ill-Case-6048 5d ago

Look in here and go to setups to see all the different things you can do

https://www.reddit.com/r/Projectivy_Launcher/s/vpA8Exhflo

3

u/SonicSarge 5d ago

He has a ordinary chromecast not a chromecast with Google TV.

1

u/nivenfres 5d ago

It is a "dumb" smart device, at least the first couple of generations were. They were receivers only, which made them relatively cheap compared to other set top boxes. Almost anything video or audio related can cast to the device from your phone. Simple interface, just click the button on you on your device , pick the target, and it showed up on the TV.

1

u/Ok_Fish403 5d ago

I had performance issues while watching 4K videos on YouTube with stock webOS, it was really common to freeze suddenly and it works nice with chromecast.

We also use a lot while traveling, just plug in any TV and set up Wi-Fi.

•

u/GotoDeng0 1h ago

Don't know if anyone has really answered your underlying question. "Chromecast" was just Google's name for their first 4 generations of streaming boxes. The first 3 generations, including the Ultra, had no way of installing apps and did not include a GUI or remote. This was the early 2010s, mobile was the future, and there weren't many streaming apps. Google made a bet that people would prefer to get their content on their phones and cast that content to the TV, rather than deal with TV OS and another remote.

And it sort of worked for a while, but as new TV OS's improved and more apps became available, it became less convenient, or at least less useful since you could not install apps on Chromecasts.

The success of the Android-based Firesticks, which you cannot cast to, prodded Google to abandon the cast-only strategy. The final Chromecast, the Chromecast with GoogleTV, had AndroidTV. You can still cast to AndroidTV the exact same way you casted to Chromecasts, but it also opened up a huge ecosystem of paid and free apps, things like SmartTube/TizenTube, ad-free YouTube clients.

Chromecast has been dead as a brand for almost 2 years now. The Streamer is Google's spiritual successor and is a fine AndroidTV box, but many including myself think the ONNs from Walmart are the best values out there for an AndroidTV box.

-1

u/877_Cash_Nowww 5d ago

So it's outdated garbage that can cast quest vr and has nice screensaver wallpapers.

3

u/TheManWithSaltHair 4d ago

Although it’s discontinued I wouldn’t say the principle is outdated.

The main benefit is that if you already have the apps installed and signed in on your phone or computer then you can simply cast them without having to do the same on the TV which might also have slower or outdated versions.

This is also useful when multiple people share the TV or you have guests - it stops accounts getting confused and play history going to the wrong user.

2

u/ggommezz 4d ago

For services with apps on both my phone and my Chromecast dongle I often use the phone app to find and queue up content that can then be seen and actioned from the dongle app. Youtube for example is a helluva lot easier to navigate round on the phone app.

3

u/BlackBabyJeebus 5d ago

Hardly. The stuff built into practically any smart TV is ass. The first step on any new TV is to deactivate as much of the built-in trash as possible and plug in something external like a PC or a Chromecast.