Most useful 35 dollar gift ever - Google Chromecast

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.amazon.com/Google-Chromecast-Streaming-Media-Player/dp/B00DR0PDNE/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1388184851&sr=1-1&keywords=chromecast

I am not much of a gadget person, but having the ability to stream anything you can view on an android device - phone, laptop, tablet - onto the TV is pretty great. The Roku box is now back in the drawer and in its place the Chromecast device - we are using it for Netflix steaming, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube videos - will get heavy use during baseball season (mlb.com)...

Anyone else have one of these things? Pretty amazing!

[madinmaryland]

1. We got ourselves one. We have watched two movies and a bunch of tv shows, and I think it has

paid for itself already.

How much does mlb.com cost?

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. I think the price has gone up - used to be less than 20/mo...not sure about

this coming season.

[madinmaryland]

3. Thanks! Probably won't subscribe. Wouldn't be worth $120+ to see a couple games that I might

be interested in. I'm a Pirates fan, though you probably know that from the Sports Group. My wife doesn't watch sports programming and just gets pissed when I do. Except when football season come around, she doesn't get pissed because she can laugh at me as I struggle through another lackluster season.

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. I think I watched just about every Red Sox game last year on my laptop....

it was quite a season to do so!

[madinmaryland]

6. The amount of grief I would catch just doesn't make it worth it. It's bad enough

that I spend every evening on DU!!

[Locut0s]

4. Cool. I've seen those but never heard of someone who got one...

We have an Apple TV and and an ASUS O!play which work wonderfully for most things. Netflix, YouTube, etc.. But being and android fan I can see loving that!

[Gidney N Cloyd]

7. I'm not sure I get this. It plugs into the TV's HDMI port but...

...there's still a device like an iPad, laptop, or smartphone involved. I assume the iPad et al is what's actually connecting to Netflix or Hulu and then somehow sending (via bluetooth maybe) to the chromecast device? Otherwise, what do I need the iPad et al for? To me it sounds like I'm substituting this chromecast device and an iPad/phone/whatever for what had been handled by a Roku unit alone... ?

[NRaleighLiberal]

8. I am not at all techno savvy...but Roku doesn't allow one to just surf the net and play

whatever youtube videos can be found - so what I do is sit with my laptop and find content - then I connect the tab I have open to Chromecast, or in the case of YouTube or other videos, there is a small Chromecast icon that shows up on the bar - click it and it plays the video full screen - and I can then use my laptop to browse around opening an additional tab. It goes through the home Wireless modem (so my laptop tells the Wireless signal what to transmit to the chromecast device hooked into the HDMI slot on the TV).

Tonight I opened the Spotify web browser and we've been pushing music through our TV. For things like Netflix, which has a Roku channel, the Chromecast is redundant in a way....

A few of the Amazon reviews actually have great detailed info on what it is and what it isn't.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

9. Seems like that's going to increase the amount of wifi traffic compared to just a Roku.

What I do now is essentially play the Netflix (or other source) stream on a laptop or iPad and connect via cable to the TV's PC port. So that's wifi to computer to (via wire) TV.