If you do not know what the Chromecast is it can be explained quite easily. Google basically launched the device last year and as long as you have an HDMI port on your HDTV, the device turned it into a smart TV. The device has built in Wi-Fi and is powered by USB port or AC adapter and plugs into an open HDMI port in order to transfer whatever you see on your smartphone or tablet to the HDTV in front of you. When the device first launched last year it was reviewed as one of the best gadgets for the year and the $35 price tag was not that hard to look at.
The apps that were available for the device were limited to Netflix, HuluPlus and YouTube to name the main ones, but that has changed a little bit since then. According to online sources, Google has finally released the SDK files to developers for the Chromecast and that is just as good of news for them as it is for the consumer. Now, developers can get into the code and learn to integrate the Chromecast into their apps.
This is going to grow the number of applications by the hundreds in no time and even though there is still going to be a learning curve in the early going, the Chromecast has still become one of the best gadgets to buy for your living room. The Chromecast is essentially going to do the same thing for your HDTV that AppleTV, Roku and GoogleTV have done for it in the past. The odds are very good that Google’s Chromecast is going to be more efficient and will be able to easily take on the competition after this recent update.
One of the best features of the Chromecast comes with the YouTube application. Once you have the free to download application on your tablet you can search through YouTube and once you find a bunch of videos that you want to watch, you can stream what you are watching right to your HDTV with a couple simple taps. Since most of the video content on YouTube is in HD, your experience feels like you are watching HDTV from your cable or satellite provider. According to Google “virtually any application” can use the features that are built into Chromecast.
