Review: ChromeCast (First Impression)

I have been using Google's ChromeCast for a few weeks now. I bought it to display my desktop to my TV. It does not exactly do that but has a function sufficient for me. Overall, I really enjoy it and was pretty simple to set up. It connects to the TV via an HDMI port. Now there is even less reason to have a Smart TV feature. There are limited apps that display videos on my phone (Motorola Droid RAZR) to the TV and seem to work much better than the desktop version.

CONS

There are a few minor cons to ChromeCast. The lag is kind of annoying. Besides that, the others are rather minor. I have not played with Apple TV or Roku.

One odd thing is that you need a mobile phone (maybe tablet too) to do the initial setup. I could not set it up through my desktop. The initial setup is to connect the ChromeCast device to your wireless router. Once set, I installed the ChromeCast addin to Google Chrome. Once installed, an icon will appear near the configuration button.

The desktop limitation is that it can only share the browser (Chrome to be specific) not my desktop but I just wanted it to watch streams so good enough. Another problem was that the video did not transpose to my TV properly. It displayed larger than the TV. The problem was actually a setting on the TV where I had to set the video to exact dimensions instead of stretch.

Another con is that the TV is not as sharp as my monitor. I have been testing ChromeCast by watching Twitch stream, StarCraft II WCS America Season 2. The scores and metrics do not appear on the TV clearly even when I stand right next to the TV. It is somewhat blurry. It is readable but not as sharp which may be that Twitch does not stream HD (or at least the channel). The reason is that when watching Cosmos on Youtube through my phone, it does seem much clearer and crisper although the text is much larger so not exactly a perfect comparison.

The most annoying con is that the video lags at random points of time for the browser. When there are lag spikes, portions of the video is smudged and at times pauses completely. I am not sure exactly what causes the lag. There are no new apps running on the PC when streaming, and there is nothing taking up the wireless bandwidth. This problem does not seem to exist when playing videos from my Droid RAZR. The desktop Chrome addin is in beta so I have high hopes this will be corrected at some point.

Reference

ChromeCast site - http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/index.html

Update

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/07/chromecast-adds-support-for-android.html

Looks interesting, but unfortunately, I am still running ICS. Perhaps this is a sign that I need a new phone. 

HOWTO: Google Chrome Remote Desktop - Change Pin/Password, Forgot Pin

This took me a while to figure out and could not find a satisfactory solution. I was testing at first and just used a test pin since I didn't have a 6 digit pin readily thought through, so forgot what PIN that was.

1. Open Google Chrome
2. Go to Settings
3. Click Extensions
4. Find Chrome Remote Desktop > Click Visit website
5. Click Launch App
6. At the bottom of the page, there is a link at the bottom of the page "Change PIN"


This is on Google Chrome on Windows 7.

Reference

If the above does not work, try the links below in Google Chrome, but I'm not sure if these will work. It works on my pc but unsure if keys are specific to my install
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote-desktop/gbchcmhmhahfdphkhkmpfmihenigjmpp

You may have to copy/paste this manually:
chrome-extension://gbchcmhmhahfdphkhkmpfmihenigjmpp/main.html

Key Search Terms

Forgot Chrome Remote PIN, Forgot Chrome Remote Desktop PIN
Change PIN for Remote Desktop

Update (4/25/2021)

Please note this post was created in 2014. Many of this information is probably obsolete. I may have used Google Remote Desktop another month after this post, so I cannot share what the new process is. If someone would like to provide a link to a modern process, I will post this here.