The Original Chromecast Hits End of Life After a Decade of Service - Slashdot
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The Original Chromecast Hits End of Life After a Decade of Service
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The original Chromecast was wildly successful and sold 10 million units in 2014 alone. For years, the device was mentioned in Google earnings calls as the highlight of the company's hardware efforts, and it was essentially the company's first successful piece of hardware. The Chromecast made it easy to beam Internet videos to your TV at a time when that was otherwise pretty complicated.
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Did streaming Tik Tok to your TV become harder?
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I suspect it is because Google does not want to support computer hardware forever. These Chromebooks are not immediately shutting down; they are no longer going to get patches and updates from Google. Frankly, 10 years is a long time for computer support.
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Chromecast != Chromebook
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Stupid autocorrect
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You didn't read it correctly. The hardware will not keep up with changing demands, thus over time the performance of the hardware will degrade.
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The performance of the hardware will remain unchanged. And if updates to the applications aren't available (or installed, if available), the system performance will remain the same.
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For hardware running offline tasks on relatively offline data, sure.
However, things get trickier when you bring in, say, streaming videos from the internet into the picture.
For example, the first gen ChromeCast *only* supported H264 and VP8 in hardware. So if a critical mass of streaming services said they were only bothering to provide HEVC or AV1 moving forward, then the device would be useless.
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My TV is "dumb," i.e. I do not connect it to a LAN, let alone the internet. What risks, if any, do I incur by continuing to use my Gen1 Chromecast to receive streams from VLC playing videos on my laptop?
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I think the only risks are that it may not be powerful enough to play some of the new codex. It doesn't sound like they are disabling it.
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You're that one guy who has a bunch of adapters on all of his cables.
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As long as nothing significant changes in your setup. If your Gen 1 Chromecast dies and you have to buy a newer Chromecast it is possible that it does not communicate well with your older Chromebook.
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What risks, if any, do I incur by continuing to use my Gen1 Chromecast to receive streams from VLC playing videos on my laptop?
I faced a similar question in 2018, when (against my better judgement) I bought a Chromecast Audio. The way I used it was that mpd output to a stream, and whenever HomeAssistant saw mpd play something, it told the Chromecast to stream from mpd. It was mostly reliable. Mostly. But I eventually ended up replacing the Chromecast Audio with a "real computer" which avoided the aforementi
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"The Chromecast made it easy to beam Internet videos to your TV at a time when that was otherwise pretty complicated."
The Apple TV predates the Chromecast by six or seven years, and it was never complicated to use. And AirPlay (originally AirTunes) predates it by ten years.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but Apple TV doesn't let you send what is playing on your phone to your TV screen.
Also it didn't cost $35.
The point of Chromecast was to be the cheapest possible way to open your dumb TV up to every video app on your phone, with no need to worry about developers adding special support for it.
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Mine quit working about 5 years ago. I thought they had already abandoned it. The way it worked always seemed kind of awkward, like it was streaming through your phone to the Chromecast to the TV.
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We had to replace our original Chromecast once when it just stopped working and again several years ago when it became flaky and would not reliably stream video without being restarted immediately before use (i.e. you could not leave it connected for a day or two and then use it). The newer ones are a lot more reliable.
In an ideal world the widget would work for longer, but given my experience, I think that Google ending support for it after 10 years may not be cutting off that many still-working devices.
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Still have 2 originals and a gen2. All working great. We use all 3 daily and they are powered at least at least every day. One of them stays on all the time (the TV usb port is 24x7 powered).
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The first successful piece of hardware after millions of servers and switch ports worth of networking gear that was the platform for the whole company.
But sure, let's go with "first".
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