This weekend an update rolled out to Google’s Chromecast that many users weren’t too excited about. After seeing it arrive on Thursday evening, many developers quickly noticed it broke local media streaming. Mainly Koush, as the update killed the feature enabling his Aircast app to function. After many reports of Google tightening their grip on the cast, today they’ve issued a statement to reassure our minds.
A few lines of code broke local media playback on the Chromecast, which updates automatically, and instantly made the developer Koush hit Google+ and confirm his app no longer worked. Being able to stream video right from Dropbox or your gallery with ease. Today’s comments by Google are good ones, confirming they’re excited to offer local media streaming, eventually.
According to The Verge, who asked for comment, Google will be pushing out a much updated Chromecast SDK at a later date that will be much different than what it is now. They want to provide the best experience for users and developers alike, and that’s why this update killed streaming. Hopefully a future update enables it, but for now we’re out of luck. Here’s the full statement:
We’re excited to bring more content to Chromecast and would like to support all types of apps, including those for local content. It’s still early days for the Google Cast SDK, which we just released in developer preview for early development and testing only. We expect that the SDK will continue to change before we launch out of developer preview, and want to provide a great experience for users and developers before making the SDK and additional apps more broadly available.” — Google
So there you have it folks. Google is excited to support tons of content, including local content. We saw a lot of worried comments that Google would be locking this to white-list app and services, but that appears to not be the case. They might have done it on purpose for now, but hopefully it will return. Once everything gets squared away and improved Google should open it up for everyone to enjoy. Hopefully Aircast and other apps will all have a shot to improve the Chromecast, and soon.
It is so cool..I have waited for it so long
Glad to hear this. Luckily my Chromecast hasn’t been updated since I’ve had it unplug, but guess I can rest assured that I’ll be able to stream local content again. 🙂
It plays Netflix and YouTube well just like your old smart TV box, but it sucks big ass when it casts to your TV. The picture and sound quality is so bad, that I returned my Chromscast back to Best Buy the day I bought it.
I had the same problem but found out it streams muuccchhhh smoother if you stream from a pc or laptop connected with a wire directly to your modem or router. If you stream from a phone or tablet wireless I don’t think the data goes fast enough as with a wired connection. Works awesome for me.