Chrome Cast and Netflix

I bought Google’s chrome cast about a year ago because i was curious to how it works. I have had Netflix for quite some time and i have it linked to my Xbox so anytime i wanted to i could just log onto Xbox and watch Netflix. I wanted to see how much better the chrome cast is since i don’t have my xbox hooked up to my big screen. 

I must say that i am impressed the chrome cast. I really like what it is capable of. The chrome cast while was designed to let you share any chrome browser on a television i pretty much only use it for the Netflix streaming onto my TV. Chrome cast is rather simple to setup but at the same time it can be quite a pain. The first time i set it up, my Ipad did not want to recognize the device I had to close and re run the program a few times before the Chrome cast would be recognized. After that it was up and ready to go. 

It took a while to get used to chrome cast but i must say that it is nice to have. The way the Chrome cast works is you have to install the chrome cast browser add on into your device, after that you select the channel that your device is attached to and a background picture will appear. Open Netflix and select that you want to watch. There will be a wifi looking icon on the control panel and once you press it, it will load to the television allowing you to keep using your device while you watch. 

The nice thing is that you can use the chrome cast with anything including your computer as long as the TV has and HDMI port and you are running chrome and the browser add on. You can take the chrome cast device with you, but it requires being setup again on the new wireless, but still allows you to watch Netflix pretty much anywhere. 

I have noticed a few things with it that i can only hope are fixed or improved. When I use the Chrome cast and Netflix on the Ipad it works out pretty well. When the episode ends you can quickly access the quick menu of all the episodes and select the new one that will load. for some reason this feature is not available on my phone or my laptop. From what i can see you have to un share the video from chrome cast and then go in and select the next video and share that one. 

When i watch Netflix on my Xbox the next episode will usually load at the end of the episode you are currently watching. Most of the time there is a counter to the new episode but sometimes you have to tell it to go to the next episode. I would like to see that feature added to my phone and Computer. I may have not seen it on my phone but i know that it isn’t available on my laptop. It would be nice if it automatically went to the next episode for you, or gave you the option when you opened the app back up. Having to turn off the cast and then selecting the next episode is sometimes annoying. 

I would also like Netflix to add a fast forward feature on my devices so that i could skip a part or rewind, sometimes when you try to scroll back or forward it doesn’t work out right or you go too far. It wouldn’t be bad if you could move forward or backward in 30 second cycles either. 

I played with Chrome casts ability to share pages that you are viewing. If you have an email or something up on your chrome browser then you can share just a specific tab. You can’t however share something with video. You can share your youtube videos on your tv which is cool but you can’t share live streams. I was watching a webcast and i tried to share it but it only lets me share the tab which just shows the whole page that i am looking at. That means you don’t get the sound either. It would be nice if there was a way that you could send the live stream webcast onto your TV.

One other thing that i noticed is that sometimes you will have issues where the video will need to buffer or it till take some time for the video to load after you have shared it, but that is to be expected and most of the time isn’t that big of an issue if you have a decent wireless signal.

I must say that i am really impressed with the Chrome cast and i recommend getting it for anyone that doesn’t have an Xbox hooked up to your TV. The chrome cast usually goes for around $30 bucks and allows you to stream Netflix and Youtube. I haven’t seen anything that allows you to stream Hulu onto your TV but i can only imagine that it will eventually be compatible with the Chrome cast.