I mentioned last year that I had managed to get somebody to bring me a Google Chromecast
Yesterday was the official UK launch and to go with it the BBC announced that the Android and iOS iPlayer applications would both be supporting the device. This is great news and really adds to the capability of the device.
Up until now I’ve mainly been using mine to watch a films and TV series I’ve bought from Google Play and to play my music through the TV + sounds system in my living room. But with iPlayer support I can see it getting a lot more use, as I tended to watch iPlayer content on my Nexus 7 which is ok, but a little bit small.
The iPlayer app just adds the little cast icon to the title bar of the app and if you connect to a Chromecast it sends the device rather than firing up the video app on the phone. The BBC seam to have done a decent first pass with a nice lock screen integration showing the program art. I gave it a test drive catching up on the last 2 episodes of Salamander that I had missed, the quality was great and playback was near instant (but that may be as much to do with my fibre broadband as anything else).
I’m even seriously considering buying my folks one so they can use iPlayer as the only time they’ve used it so far is when I’ve been back up home and plugged one of the laptops into the TV for them. Dad has an Android phone already and there was some talk of them getting a tablet for my niece to use when she visits.
The only problem I see with it is the price, at £30 it’s 3 times the cheapest price you can get a NOW TV Box
The only thing left if for me to finally get round to updating my MythTV setup so I can make use of the HLS support in the new version and write a Android app to display recorded shows via the Chromecast.