Chromecast Support for YouTube Live Streams

Chromecast is now even more useful: you can watch YouTube's live streams. This should work in YouTube's mobile apps and in Chrome for Android.

Here's a screenshot from YouTube's app for Android:

"With Chromecast available in 18 countries and YouTube live streams happening on the regular, we wanted to share one of our favorite ways to use Chromecast. Head to one of the live streams in the YouTube app, just press the cast button, then kick back and enjoy these live events from the comfort of your living room," informs Google.

Here are some live streams you can watch:

* ASP World Tour (surfing)
* Adidas Dugout live from Rio (football / soccer)
* Birds, puppies, cats and more streaming live @ The Pet Collective
* other live streams

Apparently, "YouTube Live streams cannot be viewed from Germany." Here's an explanation: "because of the German law (RStV), you must have a broadcast licence from the media authorities when you make a live stream that can reach more than 500 people at the same time. Not getting one would result in a fine of up to 500000€. "

Cast Videos in Chrome for Android

The latest beta release of Chrome 35 for Android added support for casting HTML5 videos. You can now send videos to the Chromecast from any site that uses HTML5 video players, including YouTube.

To connect to a Chromecast, you need to play a video in fullscreen, click the cast icon and select a Chromecast device. You can then change the volume, fast forward or switch to a different video. YouTube's mobile site has support for the TV queue, so you can add videos to the queue instead of playing them right away.

The Chromecast integration is not perfect, there are some bugs that need to be fixed, but it's nice to see that you can cast almost any video right from the mobile browser, without having to install other apps and wait for the developers to integrate their apps with Chromecast.

Chrome 35 for Android also adds support for undoing tab closing, Samsung's multi-window feature and fullscreen videos with subtitles and HTML5 controls. Here's a video that shows the undo close tab feature in action, courtesy of Android Police:

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Chromecast Photowall

Photowall for Chromecast is a cool experiment that makes Chromecast more useful. It's a simple way to upload photos from multiple devices and display them in real time on the TV.

"Setting up a Photowall is easy. You'll need to have a Chromecast plugged into your TV, then you can create a Photowall from your laptop, phone or tablet. Once you're set up, you and your friends can start sending photos directly to the big screen. When you're finished, a YouTube video of your Photowall is automatically generated, which is perfect for sharing with everyone who took part," explains Google. Photowall works even if you don't have a Chromecast: it will use your computer screen.

Google also developed apps for Android and iOS. You can also upload photos from your favorite mobile browser by visiting g.co/photowall. Google even lets you tweak the photo before sending it to the TV: you can crop it, add captions and draw using the "doodle" feature.

Google Chromecast Goes Global

Chromecast quickly became the best selling electronics product at amazon.com. Now it's at #2 and it has 13,788 reviews. Somehow, everyone had to buy one. It was cheap, it was a Google product and it promised to solve a big problem: connecting your mobile devices to your TV.

The number of apps has continually increased, there's a public API that can be used by developers and now the hardware is no longer available only in the US. "Chromecast is available in an additional 11 countries — Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the U.K," announced Google a few days ago. Google worked with local content providers, so you'll find many new apps that support Chromecast: BBC iPlayer in the U.K., France TV Pluzz and SFR TV in France, Watchever in Germany and more.

Chromecast achieved what Google TV couldn't do. Hardware was cheap and easy to use, content providers felt welcome, software was updated frequently. Google TV tried to solve too many problems at once, hardware wasn't great, software was rarely updated, content providers blocked the browser and didn't develop apps, few people bought Google TV devices. Chromecast did a few things very well and broke the cycle.

"Chromecast complements our Google TV efforts as a low-cost, easy device for consumers to watch online content on their TV without a new TV, new remotes or interfaces. Our partners still offer Google TV-enabled HDTVs and boxes that have the core functionality of Chromecast plus a rich, interactive Android experience," says Google.

Chromecast Screensaver

If you don't cast music, videos or photos, Google's Chromecast starts to display a slideshow with some beautiful photos. It's a screensaver you can't customize, but the photos are constantly updated by Google.

The Chromecast screensaver is actually a web page you can access from any device, just in case you want to see some great photos or to save them. It's interesting that Google doesn't use Media RSS feeds and the image URLs are hardcoded.

To find the URL of the image that's displayed, right click the page and select "inspect element". Find the code that starts with <div id="container" picture-url= and double click the URL that follows, so you can copy it. I only tested this in Chrome and Firefox.

{ via Chromebook Central }

10 New Chromecast Apps

The number of apps that support Chromecast has increased: there are 10 new apps and most of them are free. Here's the list:

* VEVO (Android, iOS) - music videos app, available in a few countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, UK and US.

* Red Bull.TV (Android, iOS) - videos and shows

* Songza (Android) - music streaming, online radio (there's an iOS app, but it doesn't support Chromecast yet)

* PostTV (Android) - news from Washington Post

* Viki (Android, iOS) - "Korean dramas, Taiwanese, Chinese and Filipino dramas, Telenovelas, Japanese dramas and anime, American cartoons, NBC Universal, History Channel, A&E, E! TV shows, as well as movies from Indonesia, Hong Kong"

* Revision3 (Android, iOS) - shows

* BeyondPod (Android) - podcast manager

* Plex (Android) - media player, Chromecast support only for videos, the app costs $5 (there's an iOS app, but it doesn't support Chromecast yet)

* Avia (Android) - media player, Chromecast support for local videos, music and photos, requires an in-app purchase that costs $3. I tried the app and it works well for local files, but the Google Cast API supports a small number of file formats

* RealPlayer Cloud (Android, iOS) - movie player that stores your videos online, US and Canada only

"There's no need to huddle around small screens when you can share your own photos and videos using your phone, tablet, or laptop," mentions Google.

From what I tried, the most interesting apps seem to be Songza (for playing online music) and Avia (for playing local files).