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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

I find myself never using them other than to watch youtube. What do people use it for?

Why can't I buy something to just stream my screen? Like the steam link but for everything. Not just steam.

You can drag and drop a local file into a Chrome tab and play it on Chromecast. You can basically stream anything in a Chrome tab, e.g. open an online stream on your laptop and stream it to the Chromecast in full screen, useful for e.g. sports streaming websites or national broadcasters. Useful when you're lazy and don't want to hook up a long HDMI cable to your laptop.

What is the frame rate like when you do this, though? A buddy had an original run Chromecast and I remember being excited about that feature back in the day, but the framerate for tab streaming was so inconsistent it wasn't watchable.

You wont get Blu Ray quality for sure, but for "normal" online streams the frame rate has been perfectly watchable for me.

I watch all of my TV through it.

I buy box sets from Amazon Video and watch them (which has to be laptop). My girlfriend watches a lot of BBC iPlayer, we both watch Netflix. On occasion I'll download something and it'll happily stream from my phone (Localcast) or laptop (Videostream).

I use it for everything that my TV doesn't have a native app for, which is primarily Crunchyroll. Occasionally it's fantastic for random things -- my local soccer club FC Cincinnati was playing a preseason match yesterday that was only watchable via a livestream on the venue's website. Pulled it up on my phone, and sure enough, the little Chromecast button appeared, and it streamed without issue -- was anticipating having to hook up my laptop to the TV instead.

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