I’ve seen the commercials, but they’re not clear about what this thing actually does. (Probably because I tend to ignore [del]spam[/del] commercials.)
Through osmosis, I have the idea that you can stream things from your computer (e.g., Netflix and Hulu) and this gadget will stream them from your computer to your TV via Wi-Fi. Is that correct?
Also: If you have an Internet-ready TV, is Chromecast of any practicality?
This review from August might help.
I got one because my Roku started acting up and it was less expensive than buying a new box.
It’s a little bit like a large flash drive that you plug into an hdmi port. It needs power though, so it has a cord at the end. You can plug that into a usb port, if you have one on the tv, or an outlet. That makes it a little more bulky, but it still hardly takes up any space in a bag if you want to use it when you travel.
You can actually stream anything from a Chrome browser to the tv using a Chromecast plugin. I’ve sent a few soccer and hockey games to mine from NBC Sports. It’s not the best quality (some picture stuttering or loss), but it’s better than nothing.
I have also streamed Netflix and HBOGo from my Android tablet, which works perfectly; no issues at all. Those are two of the only apps that you can use it with right now though. There’s an HBOGo channel for the Roku, but Directv isn’t one of the providers, so you can’t stream anything if you have Dtv. I’m not sure if this would be true of an internet-ready TV. Streaming from the app to the Chromecast doesn’t have any restrictions.