At least until they kill the product in 18 months
Well they’re discontinuing the OG Chromecast and Chromecast w/ Google TV for this. So you’re probably right.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/6/24214471/google-chromecast-line-discontinued
Never invest too heavily in Google anything.
Although, isn’t this just a rebranding and evolution of the Chromecast? Seems like the same experience and platform, but with Ethernet, thread / matter, more storage, faster compute, etc.
Yeah but $30 USD vs $100 USD targets completely different customers and use cases.
I was willing to spend $30 per TV. But not $100.
Agreed. Just saying I that it’s basically the same platform and experience. They’ve just decided to only sell beefier / more expensive versions of the product.
Damn, too late. I just bought an Alphabet share, because the value tanked this month.
No thanks I’ll stick with my Apple TV
Go away, Google.
I’m probably a minority in this (although probably not so much here on Lemmy), but if anything, I’d want my TV to be less smart, and less personalised. I don’t want Google to know what my favourite TV shows and movies are. I don’t want “suggestions” on which streaming platforms I could also install (often before the content I would actually want to see). And I most definitely don’t want my TV to be monitoring the rest of my “smart” home.
For the people who are part of this articles titular “we”, I seriously wonder: why would you have been waiting for this?
I think you’re definitely in the majority on lemmy with this take but i agree.
I have a “smart tv” that has never even seen WiFi because i prefer having control over my hardware. My media pc is all i need. I even got a little remote for an air mouse and keyboard combo that works just fine for me.
I just got a chromecast, and suddenly they want to change the MO to a set top box?
the motherfucker is 2 years old. a product should last more than 2 years. anyone know any better options for streaming hardware? i loved my chromecast but if its clear that this company is just gonna throw it out in favor a “shiny new thing” then i won’t seek replacement.
It’s arguably getting long in the tooth, but I’ve had no complaints about my NVIDIA Shield Pro.
They want me to buy a streaming stick from an advertising company and tell me it is going to be the experience that I’ve been looking for? Yeah… no.
This will either be canceled or enshittified immediately.
The real difference:
Haha FUCK
I’d fuckin give up watching media at all if that was my only option
All of my TVs have never seen an internet connection. I know the Apple hate is strong, but I’ve been throwing ATVs behind them since they were first released. No ads, no BS. Just a very clean experience that has never changed. I couldn’t imagine thinking putting a Google device from the largest advertising company on the planet would be some kind of upgrade.
All of my TVs have never seen an internet connection.
I don’t want this device, or one like it, because it’s proprietary and there are good, open “streaming/media/PVR device what connects to a TV” devices out there. I can get HTPC hardware and put Kodi or MythTV on it.
But.
This isn’t a TV. It’s a device that connects to the Internet on one side and to the TV on the other, like a cable box.
For me, at least, there’s a very large difference there. I absolutely do not want a TV that connects to the Internet for a long, long range of reasons. I want a TV that is a dumb display. I want it to be a good display, but just a display.
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All-in-one devices need to get thrown out when some part of them is obsolete. The streaming aspect has been rapidly changing, as well as the computing aspect. Sometimes new security issues arise. Sometimes new functionality (like wireless) arises. Dumb displays, in contrast, can often serve for a very long time. You can use an old, analog TV quite some decades after its manufacturer has gone out of business. I want a modular setup, not an all-in-one, given the considerable disparity in when each component is likely to become obsolete. Same thing with stuff like building Android computers into cars – that Android computer is likely going to be obsolete long before the car is mechanically obsolete.
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A “smart” TV sees and can act on everything that you’re viewing. An attached box only knows about what it is outputting to the TV.
I’d also add some other points, not specific to the all-in-one aspect.
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You may not want to use a commercial streaming service at all. But if you do, I’m not aware of any that offer a no-log policy. I mean, personally, I get a lot of good out of YouTube and would happily buy YouTube Premium if I could be certain that it’d come with a no-log policy, but what Google’s selling, as best I can tell, is no ads. If I pay for YouTube Premium, it just reliably links my financial information to my profile. I don’t want that. And the same is probably, though I haven’t gone through and audited them, true of other streaming services. Frankly, if I were to buy one, I’d rather have any such service that might be data-mining me on a little box that only talks to my TV and the Internet, not living on an Android device or personal computer that I use.
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Even if a company doesn’t do ads, they’ll likely outsource it to someone. Like, even if a company offers a commercial service and has premium, ad-free service, my guess is that they will probably also have an ad-supported mode of operation. I mean, most television in the US, even in the pre-Internet era, has traditionally has been substantially ad-supported. If a service cannot insert ads, then people have found other routes to get ads in front of people’s eyes, like paid product placement in the actual media that you’re watching. Frankly, even if were going to watch ads, I’d rather have them separate from the media that I’m watching than worked into it.
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The Nvidia Shield is already the rival for the Apple TV.
If only Apple added support for bitstreaming I’d replace my Shield with an AppleTV in a heartbeat.
Don’t get me wrong, the Shield plays everything you throw at it. The hardware is great but the software is so janky. It’s often slow to respond to input, it needs a reboot every couple of days because it just gets more laggy and choppy over time. Sometimes it just forgets my TV supports Dolby Vision until I reboot it. Support from Nvidia seems to have dried up as well.
Just posted about ATV switch from shield myself. I agree with you, the bitstream issue is noticeable on my atmos setup for sure, but all and all I got so fed up with the exact issues you described that I threw in the towel and switched. Overall I think it’s worth it. With some adjustments in my sub crossover I’ve compensated for sound issues a little. I held out because there were all these rumors about Apple finally releasing a new appletv, but now looks unlikely to happen. You have shield or pro? I had both and at first I really didn’t find a whole lot of difference in performance, but for some reason with time the shield tube really started having far more issues than the pro.
I have the 2018 pro. The problem with lack of bitstreaming is that no matter what you adjust, you won’t get 3D audio (i.e. height speakers) out of the LPCM streams. You can do DD+Atmos on streaming services but you miss out on TrueHD+Atmos and DTS:X on bluray backups. That’s not something I want to give up.
Yeah, it’s not cheap, but if you were willing to pay (like you would with an Apple TV) and want Android, it’s a pretty easy choice.
This product looks awful.
First, ever since they added ads to Google TV back in 2021 (even on the Nvidia Shield TV), it’s been a subpar experience. Well, it was for me, at least - maybe it’s improved, but I switched to Apple TV as a result and haven’t looked back.
Second, why would anyone get this over an Nvidia Shield TV or an Apple TV, other than ignorance or an incredibly strict budget? The Apple TV 4K is $130/$150 new and the Shield TV is $150 new. The Shield TV, which came out in 2017, is faster than this. The Apple TV 4K is 16x faster. And if you get either refurbished, get an older Apple TV,
For anyone on a strict budget, the $30-$50 Chromecasts make way more sense than this device. Yes, they’re ending production of those, but there are still competitors near that price point.
The only thing I can think of is that they’re banking on brand recognition or are hoping the segment of people without smart home hubs who are unaware of alternatives (like the $35 SmartThings Hub Dongle) and who aren’t in the Apple ecosystem is big enough.
