The original Chromecast has been updated with a new circular design, coming in three colours: Black, Coral or Lemonade.
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The technology giant says this means better and faster connections when streaming from your mobile device or laptop to the TV. You could not be sure if the Chromecast will work on a new device without losing half an hour or more. And, there’s a guest mode too. Google also introduced a Chromecast app packed with traits, including a featured content tab and voice search, created to improve the ability to discover movies and TV shows with the device.
Another feature called “What’s On” will show you the top content from all the apps that you have installed on your phone. Google has also beefed up its library of content with several new apps, including Showtime and soon, Sling TV.
Any device can be a remote control for Chromecast if they are on the same wifi network. Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, Songza, Google Play Music and Vevo all support Chromecast already and the lineup of compatible music apps is likely to keep growing. When you do this, you can then search within Google Photos using that label, and the app will be able to find those photos faster.
While this isn’t really gaming related, we might as well cover the last piece of hardware Google announced today during their event, Chromecast Audio. With all the new Sonos gear and Naim now offering Tidal support for its multiroom tech that’s where the industry’s going.
On the music front, the new Chromecast will support Spotify, while the older gen platform will gain access in the next few weeks. This is actually a pretty neat idea that allows users to turn their current speakers at home into “smart speakers” basically. Now, Google is taking streaming audio one step further with the release today of Chromecast Audio.
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“Chromecast has been one of our most requested devices since we first launched Sling TV in February”. It’s a tiny HDMI dongle that plugs into the back of your HDTV (and separately into a USB port or wall adapter for power) and lets you stream media from your smartphone, tablet, or PC to your big screen. In the meantime, the new app is great starting point for anyone with a Chromecast or Android TV.
