Google is discontinuing the Chromecast line

Of course they are.

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.

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.

"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?"

Really, rebranding from Chromecast to Google TV Streamer? Who the fuck was the genius that greenlighted this?

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?

Add it to the pile of dead google projects

Did y'all even click the article?

It will be rebranded, basically, to become the Google TV streamer. The tech is not going anywhere.

"In place of the Chromecast, the company will offer the newly announced $99.99 Google TV Streamer, which launches on September 24th."

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.

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

Literally all my friends know the name "Chromecast", why would you rename it

Not surprised. Like chromecast audio, chromecast couldn't really serve an adequate amount of ads. Basically it's only value was it forced you to use stock youtube app to stream preventing any adblocking, but if you cast your screen, then it can't stop adblocks, so it makes sense to discontinue this product. There's some open source projects out there that might be worth looking into, NymphCast is one I saw, uses a rasberry pi.

Another one for the graveyard

"okay, what successful product are we going to kill next?"

I'm waiting for Gmail, it has to be soon :)

Don't know anything about newer Chromecast but I really love my older one. Its just a dumb stick with no apps built in that I can cast stuff from my phone to. The only recent annoying thing with it is that the YouTube app changed the behaviour when you're connected, so now instead of tapping on a video to bring up a menu asking whether to play it now or add it to the queue it now just defaults playing it now when you tap on it. Makes setting up a queue of videos really annoying now cause you have to tap on the three dots to add it to the queue now.

They actually have a great product, and they're canceling it? The new ones were kind of expensive already, but every app supported it and it was very nice

It didn't have planned obsolescence in it. People bought the 3 devices they needed for their house, and have been coasting off them for a decade. Maybe with the occasional refresh for 4k or a worn out USB port or whatever.

Just corporate greed on display here. People stopped buying them because the product was simple and did what it was supposed to for a long time. Gotta enshitify it so we see those $$$ roll in again.

Edit - they also probably thought it would be a revenue stream for buying videos through Google or get their cut from some android app, but people instead watched their media from sources outside their pay umbrella

This is why I'd never invest in anything Google.

It's already rolling the dice to see if they enshitify things fast enough to ruin it for me, but now you know they will just kill whatever you have been using on a whim

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.

Ok. Can someone please update https://killedbygoogle.com/ with this and increase the counter with +1?

On another news "Why is everyone hating google now?" lol

Family practically thought I was David Blaine when I got a first gen Chromecast back in the day.

Will existing devices continue to work "forever" or must we add them to the graveyard?

Urgh.. We own three of these devices and this news really sucks because a set-top box isn't convenient for two of those TVs.

Uggggggghhhhhh another one for the pile. I love Chromecasts but to be fair the latest one with Google TV was a sign that things were getting shitty soon. 22% more CPU for a YouTube machine? Who cares? A home hub that needs my TV to work? Who cares? It's like the tech industry regrets putting everything on your phone and now they want to separate it out again. Fuck off.

Hopefully people will reverse engineer the firmware and protocol so that the old devices aren't total landfill.

Google have lost their mind...

I know haha google graveyard funny, but over a decade of production only to be replaced by a similar product is a financial success.

any product made by or linked to google is a no buy. I basically dont buy anything these days. fuck that company!

I'm actually upset you can't use Nest Audio speakers as audio out. Apple TV lets you do it with home pods, Google said they were working on it, guess they were too busy adding AI garbo to the new device.

Google is just doing Google things. It seems that over the years, Google has been doing things to destroy whatever is left of their reputation.

I look at Android for example. Even though I still use Android, I used to look forward to the next Android update. Not anymore!

I guess onn is going to completely take over the low price streaming box market then.

My god does anybody else downvote an article if it's blatant clickbait? How does it have 520 score? You were supposed to be better than r**dit remember?

A new entry to https://killedbygoogle.com/?

Damm I've used these to stream my security cameras to portable monitors around the house. I hope they keep working

Anyone looking for a streaming box look into the Walmart Onn 4k Pro, came out earlier this year and it works great. The remote has an annoying button on it, but that's my only complaint.

Switched to apple TV already. Googles lame ad infused cheap plastic remote did the trick on me. They have to pay ME if they want a Youtube and Netflix ad laying on my table at home.

.... Does this mean that the chromecast with google tv that is pictured, and that i just bought, will soon stop working?

Whats my next move when my chromecast audio dies? I love that thing

And? Do they plan to put all the software open source so that the millions of hardware they sold would not go to waste in some years? We should force them to by law.

f

So what's the best android tv box nowadays? Still the Shield TV?

I have the latest chromecast with android tv (i think, who knows with these garbage model names), and it's always been quite sluggish to use, and I can't replace the home screen on it to one without ads since they locked down the bootloader.

So I'm looking for one that's a bit snappier, and preferably with an unlockable bootloader, or at least the ability to replace the default launcher.

Be nice to have something to replace my Nvidia shield pro with that's not an apple tv. Looking forward to seeing how the new streaming device compares

Let's hope this doesn't only support FAT32 so we can actually add movies to it

Is there anything interesting you can do with a Chromecast dongle by jailbreaking it, if you can get one for cheap?

Eh as long as the protocol stays the same who cares? Everything has it built in nowadays, and even if it doesn't, I bet China won't stop making Chromecast dongles

As long as they don't completely nix the support à la Spotify Car Thing I'm fine with it

Mines been packed away for a few years now

I don't like google as much as the next person but they haven't made just Chromecasts for awhile now they have just been Google tv boxes so it's basically just a rebrand to increase price with the same features and hopefully better specs at least

I've never even seen this thing? All the Chromecast I've seen over the last 4-5 years have been in-built modules in Android TVs.

I already forgot it existed.

i mean not surprising since google tv with chromecast has been superior and the next logical step for it

Makes sense. Smart TVs weren't common at that point, now you can't avoid them.

nothing to see here :)