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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

Chromecast is the killer product that drives our home's media use.

It just works. It's accessible to anyone with their phone. The UI are the phone apps. It plus a few subscription services makes every other media box obsolete for us.

I got a Roku tv last month. For jokes I turned on WiFi and tried out the built in streaming. Just terrible. Great for people without phones, but who else would want that kind of experience?

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Really? I find other media players so much easier to use. I hate having to use my phone to control the player; I can't look at my phone for things and control the media at the same time. Switching back to whatever app I was using often find I have lost the connection, and it takes a good number of seconds to re-connect and gain control.

I also find it really hard to fast forward and rewind... I never get the responsiveness that I get on my XBOX, and I can't rewind and fast forward with nearly the precision, either.

>I never get the responsiveness that I get on my XBOX, and I can't rewind and fast forward with nearly the precision, either.

Comparing a $30 dongle and a multi hundred dollar computer seems a tad unfair. I'm not buying an xBox for my mom to watch Netflix.

Sure, but the person I was responding to didn't talk about the price factor at all; they simply stated it was the best media player.

Get her a Raspberry Pi with Kodi instead.

Chromecast has gotten a lot better about not losing connection in the last few years, or maybe it's because I have Pixel phones.

If you have Google Home, the voice control is awesome. I feel like I'm in the future every time I tell it to pause.

I leave it in the guest room, so it rarely gets much use, but for a short while I was using an Android TV and it was the best of both worlds. You'd have the Chromecast support in every app, but you could still use the Android TV remote to pause and track back/forward depending on which app it was streaming. Really a good experience!

Maybe I need to give it another shot, I switched to the built in Roku functionality because I couldn't stand the phone player disconnecting from the chromecast. It would always take me at least 30 seconds to pause anything; with the Roku I have a dedicated remote that works every time instantly, and it handles both the on/off and the media.

Be mindful of the telemetry being sent back from your Roku device (can be blocked with pi-hole).

For me the play/pause buttons on my TV remote work even if the app is disconnected.

> It just works.

I oddly did not have this experience at all. I could never get audio working properly, and then the Chromecast would make every other input to my TV randomly flash black if the Chromecast was plugged in. Returned to Best Buy after a couple days of wasted time and effort.

I’m the opposite. I used Chromecast for years and it always put me in a foul mood to fiddle with broken and slow apps on my phone.

Ended up getting a Roku and couldn’t be happier. Only issue I ever have is misplacing the remote.

There are apps you can download that let your phone function as a Roku remote. I misplaced my remote a while ago, so I've opted to use romote.

I love Chromecast for myself but it's tough to let my 5 year old control what show to watch - at least without handing him a laptop or iPad which isn't ideal!

I was happy with my chromecasts, until one of them stopped working on one screen. It boots up, google logo does its thing and then its black. Device can be communicated to, and resets do not work. I have read that this is HDCP related and that using a chinese hdmi splitter works... The device works fine on my Dell monitor, and I am not using any extension cable...

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