Recommend me a Mobile Phone

[LondonTom]

Would be a nice cheap option if you wanted something dedicated for Chromecast actually! (Now avalible in the UK which is why i thought of it!)

[eFestivals]

Would be a nice cheap option if you wanted something dedicated for Chromecast actually! (Now avalible in the UK which is why i thought of it!)

not heard of chromecast before now, looks interesting.

I've got a non-smart TV, but it does have a usb socket that I could stream a movie from if that movie was on as usb memory stick.

Would chromecase work from that usb socket, do you know?

[eFestivals]

ahhh, ignore me ... I see it goes to screen via the HDMI socket. Perfect.

Currys here I come.

[Spindles]

Quite a low resolution screen, 800x480, would be the reason for the low cost. At that price though you can hardly complain, absolutely fine for watching movies in bed or whatever (which is pretty much what I use my tablet for).

[eFestivals]

just got one, a breeze to set up - and a lot quieter than the doggy old PC I'd hooked up to use for iPlayer.

[LondonTom]

just got one, a breeze to set up - and a lot quieter than the doggy old PC I'd hooked up to use for iPlayer.

Ah great! (Waiting for a new debit card so haven't ordered one yet but hopefully today). I've been following it since it was released in the US, so quite excited to get my hands on it. Mainly as the Wii's iPlayer app is a bit behind now (no HD on it mainly ).

[eFestivals]

Ah great! (Waiting for a new debit card so haven't ordered one yet but hopefully today). I've been following it since it was released in the US, so quite excited to get my hands on it. Mainly as the Wii's iPlayer app is a bit behind now (no HD on it mainly ).

do you know if it's possible to 'stream' chrome to it (so that the browser is displayed on the TV screen)? Stuff suggests it does, but I couldn't see how.

[LondonTom]

do you know if it's possible to 'stream' chrome to it (so that the browser is displayed on the TV screen)? Stuff suggests it does, but I couldn't see how.

Ah seems like its only enabled via Extention in the desktop version atm. A bit pants...but the beta for the Android version does:

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57619886-285/enable-chromecast-streaming-in-latest-chrome-beta-for-android/

[windy_miller]

I'm still confused about how chromecast works. Do you have to control it with phone (pause, rewind etc). Isn't that a bit fiddly?

Also, once you tell the chromecast to stream, does the chromecast connect directly to that content, or is your phone downloading it and then forwarding it on to the chromecast?

Edited March 19, 2014 by windy_miller

[eFestivals]

I'm still confused about how chromecast works. Do you have to control it with phone (pause, rewind etc). Isn't that a bit fiddly?

Think of watching iPlayer on your phone or tablet.

Now image in the picture on your TV, but still controlled in the same way on your tablet. That's chromecast.

Also, once you tell the chromecast to stream, does the chromecast connect directly to that content, or is your phone downloading it and then forwarding it on to the chromecast?

The chromecast is connected to your home network, and pulls the data for what it's showing via that. Your phone or tablet acts only as a 'control point' for what is on-screen.

If you're familiar with Airplay or DLNA/uPnP it's pretty much just like that.

[eFestivals]

Ah seems like its only enabled via Extention in the desktop version atm. A bit pants...but the beta for the Android version does:

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57619886-285/enable-chromecast-streaming-in-latest-chrome-beta-for-android/

ahhh, cheers.

[eFestivals]

does anyone know any websites that do hooky footie streams - but that aren't flash (so I can stream them on my tablet)?

[Essex_George]

This Chromecast looks pretty interesting and for £30 looks a bargain. If there are any decent non flash football streams then even better!

[eFestivals]

This Chromecast looks pretty interesting and for £30 looks a bargain. If there are any decent non flash football streams then even better!

seems to work fine, and was a breeze to setup.

There's three things I want to use it for - iPlayer, Netflix and hooky footie streams. The first two work out of the box, the third i'll let you know.

[windy_miller]

Seems the chromecast doesn't stream MKV files without transcoding, which my NAS drive is not powerful enough to do. Think I may hold out for a while to see if they add support.

[windy_miller]

Bringing the discussion back to the topic title for a moment... I bought myself a 16Gb SIM-free Moto G for £160 the other day. Quality piece of kit for the price. The 8Gb one is only £99 if you want to save a bit of money.

[Spindles]

www.footballstreaming.info is the site I use for streams, not sure about flash on them though as I mostly use acestream, not sure if there is a client for android (I use splashtop and run the stream on a PC, then stream the PC display to tablet).

[eFestivals]

have got XBMC running on my android (and it runs MASSIVELY better than it did on my Pi, which is nice ), but annoyingly it doesn't chromecast by default.

I've found some stuff by googling that suggests that it will with a bit of twiddling, so I'll see if I can get that working later.

[Essex_George]

I have XBMC running on my laptop which I recently put linux on after my HDD went bang. I still find that the football streams through Sportsdevil are still a bit crappy and buffer alot. Have you had any problems with this on your tablet?

[eFestivals]

I have XBMC running on my laptop which I recently put linux on after my HDD went bang. I still find that the football streams through Sportsdevil are still a bit crappy and buffer alot. Have you had any problems with this on your tablet?

xmbc was dreadful when I was running it on a Raspberry Pi - it would take 5 minutes or more to try to connect to any stream, and then often wouldn't play that stream. I gave up with it.

I've only got last night to go for how it works on my tablet, but it was loading a stream within 10 or 15 secs, and loaded nearly everyone i tried - so swapping streams to try another one wasn't a big issue (I was swapping to get an english commentary).

The quality of all of them I tried was very watchable, tho it was only on a 7" screen so I might not feel the same on the TV screen.

Having said that tho, when I used XMBC before (on my PI, direct to the TV) I could almost always find a more-than-decent stream if I persevered with trying a few of them - the issue was that it would take so long different to try different ones I'd stick with the first one where I could see what was going on.

I hope to try casting XBMC from my tablet before this time tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be able to give you a more concrete answer then.

[LondonTom]

My Chromecast came yesterday at long last (Wierdly I called Google support in the evening, as it was still "pending", the morning had an email saying they had finally actually took payment..then it arrived in the afternoon ).

I like it, really really easy to setup and thought it was clever to have it act as a wifi hotspot so you can put your WEP key in. Basically apart from entering your WEP key its plug and go! It seems to work really well so far and it can only get better as more apps build in support for it. I've used iplayer and youtube so far, along with setting up and testing a Plex media server running on my gaming computer and the bit I saw seemed to worked just fine.

Just needs something for those footie streams really and it will be perfect!

[eFestivals]

Just needs something for those footie streams really and it will be perfect!

it's supposedly possible to do from XBMC but I've not succeeded in getting it working so far.

[windy_miller]

My Chromecast came yesterday at long last (Wierdly I called Google support in the evening, as it was still "pending", the morning had an email saying they had finally actually took payment..then it arrived in the afternoon ).

I like it, really really easy to setup and thought it was clever to have it act as a wifi hotspot so you can put your WEP key in. Basically apart from entering your WEP key its plug and go! It seems to work really well so far and it can only get better as more apps build in support for it. I've used iplayer and youtube so far, along with setting up and testing a Plex media server running on my gaming computer and the bit I saw seemed to worked just fine.

Just needs something for those footie streams really and it will be perfect!

You still you WEP?!

[eFestivals]

You still you WEP?!

ooooh, good point, no one should be using WEP. Dodgy as feck.

thought it was clever to have it act as a wifi hotspot

does it act as a hotspot? How?

[LondonTom]

You still you WEP?!

ha no, sorry that was me not really thinking about it!

ooooh, good point, no one should be using WEP. Dodgy as feck.

does it act as a hotspot? How?

Wrong phrasing again, but the setup allows you to connect to its own wifi network.. I think the proper phrasing would be an ad hoc wifi network?.

Edited March 27, 2014 by LondonTom