ChromeCast Audio

Christmas!  Got a cool gadget to play with--lucky me.  Wrote about it--lucky you!

I was intrigued by the setup.  This tiny device would be fine once it's connected to my home WiFi, but how to get it to that point?  Following the setup, the Chromecast started by acting as a WiFi hotspot transmitting rather than a receiving connections like it would do later.  I was instructed to connect (I was setting up from my laptop) to the WiFi point that was temporarily broadcasting only long enough to do the setup.  After doing that, I was able to put in the info of my own home WiFi (SSID, username, password) which was passed to the Chromecast.  Then it rebooted and ta-da!  Ready to roll.  I thought that was pretty cool way to do the setup.

    


Android
My Android seemed well suited as it has an option in the Chromecast app to set any audio coming from the phone to Chromecast.   So, I tested to see what would happen if a phonecall comes in while you're 'casting all audio.  My test showed that in incoming call causes the 'cast to automatically fade out.  But the ringing call doesn't 'cast to your speakers.  You can hear the ringing on the phone, but not 'cast on your speakers.  Unfortunately the inbuilt limitations of Spotify mobile meant I could only skip a certain amount of songs over a time period.  So, mobile 'casting has it's strengths and weaknesses--though the weaknesses I ran up against were due to Spotify, not Google.  Speaking of which, Youtube and Google Play (music) works great.


   

OSX

Whereas using this cool device from OSX was actually more limited than Android.  The only way to 'cast rom OSX is from a chrome browser extension.  That meant I couldn't 'cast Spotify via their OSX App.  I had to login to their website via Chrome and 'cast that browser tab.  Google Play (music) worked fine here too, although the first time I tried it I had a huge amount of cut-outs, like every few seconds for at least an entire songs.  I closed lots of unused apps and unused browser tabs, but nothing helped.  The next time I closed and reopened Chromecast on OSX it was fine and I haven't had any problems since.

ChromeOS
Now this is getting a little confusing. Kinda like running ESX hypervisor inside VMware Workstation.  Russian Dolls and virtual lans running on virtual machines with virutal luns and virtual volumes and virtual disks.  Anyway, to connect my ChromeBook, all I had to do was install the ChromeCast Chrome Browser plug-in and then it worked just like on OSX.  Same advantaged and same disadvantages.

Windows
The setup page linked above says the way to use the Chromecast on Windows is the same as OSX:  install Chrome browser.  So, I'm keen to try this on my son's Nokia/Microsoft Windows phone.  Seems there's a Chrome browser for Windows, but I couldn't find Chrome or Chromecast on the Windows mobile app store.

parting thoughts. 
I'm happy with this home entertainment gadget, and only £30--it's great.

'cast battles
You can take-over from another browser tab on your own computer as you switch from Youtube to Google Play, Spotify, NetFlix or whatever.  You aren't prompted to release your connection when another connection is requested, so it makes for a great game of 'cast "fights".  You could even annoy someone by 'casting something confusing or annoying from another part of your house.

lag between video and audio
I guess it makes sense if your video it on your local device, yet the audio is being routed through your WiFi to a speaker somewhere else, so there'll be a lag.  But we are in the habit of plugging our laptop into our speaker with a 3.5 inch cable so our NetFlix viewings have a good sound quality.  This won't work with the Chromecast audio as the lag is several seconds.  Guess I want a ChromeCast--the proper one for video