Consumer tech is at its best when it seamlessly solves a problem for you, and with Google’s latest Chromecast I can now easily watch New Japan Pro-Wrestling on my TV.
Allow me to explain.
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New Japan World, the company’s streaming video service that launched last December, is only available via a website; there are no apps for mobile devices or set-top boxes like Roku or Apple TV. That means if I want to watch Kazuchika Okada & Co. on my big screen TV, I have to suffer the indignity of stringing along an HDMI cable across my living room and connecting it to my PC.
That’s not all!
I then have to fiddle with Windows’ audio settings to ensure that the audio actually plays out of my TV’s sound bar and not my PC’s headphones, which is how I usually listen to PC audio. This is a suboptimal experience, I think you’ll agree.
The Chromecast fixes all of that.
The $35 device, which was announced alongside the Nexus 5X and 6P in late September, plugs directly into your TV’s HDMI port. Power also needs to be supplied, either by a USB port on your TV or a nearby electrical outlet. Once configured using the free Chromecast app for Android or iOS (below, left), the device then outputs the content of any compatible app (including the Chrome web browser) directly to your TV.
Google calls this “casting,” and it opens up the possibility of playing all sorts of video on the big screen, be it mainstream favorites like Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube (below, right) or niche content like Japanese men pretending to fight each other.
Image: Nicholas Deleon
Audio apps like Pocket Casts (below, left) Spotify (below, right), and TuneIn Radio (but not Apple Music) can also be “cast” to your TV, as can select mobile games like Just Dance Now and Wheel of Fortune. Google also now sells a version of Chromecast (also $35, and similarly introduced alongside the Nexus 5X and 6P) that’s specifically designed to be plugged into speakers—handy if you don’t already have an easy way to pump Spotify out of your sound system.
Image: Nicholas Deleon
People thoroughly ensconced in the Apple ecosystem can largely accomplish the same thing using an Apple TV and iOS device using what Apple calls AirPlay, but the price disparity alone between Apple TV (last generation’s model costs $69, while the new model with built-in Siri voice control starts at $149) and Chromecast may give iPhone users slight pause if they’re only concerned with watching House of Cards or The Mindy Project on the big screen.
This is Google’s first Chromecast revision since the device was first introduced in July 2013. The chief difference between the two is the device’s shape: while the original model was shaped like a USB thumb drive, this new model is shaped like a small, flat hockey puck to more easily squeeze behind your TV. Support for 5 GHz Wi-Fi (where it’s less likely to run into traffic from other wireless devices) and faster internals should also improve streaming performance compared to the previous model.
Image: Google
This is all high praise, yes, but the Chromecast isn’t quite perfect. There’s no 4K support, for one, (it tops out at 1080p), which may not be an issue for consumers today, but may be something to consider when shopping for your ideal streaming device. (Newer Roku and Amazon Fire TV models do support 4K; the new Apple TV does not.) And owing to corporate rivalry, you can’t stream Amazon or Apple content directly from their apps to your TV. You can, of course, open Amazon Video in the Chrome web browser and beam that over to your TV, but if you’re keen on watching the Transparent or the upcoming the upcoming Top Gear rebootreboot, you may be better off with a Roku or Amazon streaming device. There’s also no hardware remote control, with Chromecast instead relying on your mobile device to handle those duties.
But those are minor quibbles when you consider the fact that for $35 you’re unlocking the ability to watch an internet’s worth of video on your big screen TV.
The only question left now is whether anyone would like to stay up all night and watch the January 4 Tokyo Dome show live with me?
Google loaned Motherboard a Chromecast and Chromecast Audio unit for the purposes of this review.
