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Comment by fpgaminer | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me, or is it odd that we rejoice when things like this happen? It just doesn't feel right to reward companies who release locked-down hardware. Don't get me wrong, I share in the excitement for a $35 XBMC capable android device. But on the other hand, it seems a better idea to spend money on a product that isn't locked down in the first place.

I haven't followed the Chromecast, but why is it locked in the first place!?

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It's locked because they are selling it at a knock down price to tempt you into their eco system. As a consumer you are free to buy any of the SOC devices out on the market at the moment, of which there is a fantastic array, but they all cost more.

what can you buy with $35 that has the capabilities of the chromecast?

I think there's probably not a device with the same set of capabilities of the chromecast at the same price, but on the other hand the chromecast is missing features that you can have on other devices that cost more or less the same (take rPi or one of the thousands of android usb stick) e.g. being able to play avi/divx files (it supports h264 in mp4 and mkv) or audio tracks in ac3 or dts (it supports mp3, vorbis and aac) without transcoding, or use some android apps like p2p streaming apps (sopcast). So the problem is that you can some things really easily (e.g. netflix or sharing from phone) but you miss some other that somebody is looking for (e.g. use it a good mediaplayer having quite an old pc and phone that can't be used for transcoding sources).

I've found some of these here[1] but owning no chromecast I can't do any test by myself.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/comments/1umk7t/lets_make...

I read some guys higher up in this thread talk about using a RaspberryPi.

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