Many streaming addicts previously have struggled for getting entertainment on their TV sets from Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube or the related. You can prepare it with gaming systems, DVRs, Blu-ray players, Smart TVs that hold streaming appliance built-in, also set-top boxes particularly intended for streaming, before-mentioned as the Roku. But with the launch of Chromecast in July 2013, Google surged into the streaming media game.
Chromecast is an elongated dongle which as equal to a thumb drive that plugs into a smart television set’s HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) port and enables you to stream (or rather cast) media of your present computer or mobile gadget through your home Wi-Fi interface and onto your TV screen. You can play movies and TV shows with resolution as penetrating as 1080p, listen to music through your entertainment center’s sound system and even launch Web pages onto your TV screen in some cases.
Your phone, tablet, laptop or desktop acts as the primary launching site for the entertainment and as the remote for managing what you see and listen on your TV screen. Granted you already have a suitable device driving an agreeable operating system and have Wi-Fi through a congenial router, you get all this functionality for the cost of the Chromecast, which as of its introduction was assessed below the several comparable streaming devices at $34.99 retail.
Chromecast technical specifications
The Chromecast is a slight black device including a structure factor comparable to a bulbous flash drive. It’s 2.8 inches (72 mm) in length, 1.4 inch (35 mm) in width and 0.5 inches (12 millimeters) in height, with a weight of 1.2 ounces (34 grams). It has an HDMI output connector towards one end and a micro USB port on the opposite end. It has a reset button and an LED status light.
Its innards combine a motherboard with a system-on-a-chip processor, 512 MB of SDRAM, 2GB of flash memory and a WLAN Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and FM module.
To manage Chromecast, you will require a TV or monitor including at least one open HDMI port, which you should find on just about any high-definition (HD) television. The device has the highest resolution video output of 1080p. Chromecast is the Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) compatible. You’ll also necessitate a good Wi-Fi system connection. The Wi-Fi is 802.11b/g/n (802.11n at 2.4GHz only) with WEP, WPA, and WPA2 security.
The device appears with the following:
- A USB power cable with a micro-USB connector at one terminal and a standard USB 2.0 connector at the opposite.
- A power supply including a USB 2.0 port.
- An HDMI extender.
The last two of the above can be used optionally. The extender operates to plug in the device if it won’t match correctly in any of your convenient HDMI ports, but doing it can also help increase Wi-Fi reception if your Chromecast is becoming difficult equating to your network.
The device is powered with the USB power cord plugged inside the Chromecast via the micro-USB port, among the other end both plugged into a standard USB port or into the power adapter for inclusion into a wall socket.
Chromecast is sustained with the following operating systems, although some of its characteristics may serve with unimportantly more obsolete OSes in a few cases:
- Android Gingerbread 2.3 or higher.
- Chrome OS (Chromebook Pixel or Chrome 28 or maybe higher).
- iOS 6.0 or higher (on iPhone, iPad and iPod).
- Mac OS 10.7 or higher.
- Windows 7 or higher.
What functions can Chromecast stream to your TV?
Chromecast accepts things to your TV screen from a piece of remote equipment in the machine by utilizing something called the DIAL (Discovery and Launch) protocol. DIAL was formed together by Netflix and YouTube, which is owned by Google. DIAL truly launched on Google TV, Google’s pioneering incursion within TV control, and now it’s being blended into devices and apps by plenty of manufacturers and content providers.
One of Chromecast’s components, the DIAL Service Discovery protocol has Manageable Service Discovery Protocol variant 1.1, which is characterized by UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), to concede a DIAL client device to discover a DIAL server equipment operating on the same interface. The other component, the DIAL REST (Representational State Transfer) Service, is then reached to a query, launch or stop applications using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) applications from the client device to the server device. In this case of Chromecast, your phone, tablet or computer is the client and the Chromecast itself is the server.
