Google's Chromecast media player adds 10 new apps

Chromecast, Google's media-streaming dongle, is getting a fleet of new apps, from Vevo to Vivi and Red Bull TV. 

|
Google
Google's Chromecast in action.

Google has added 10 new apps for Chromecast, its dongle-driven digital media player. 

Among the applications: Red Bull TV, music video site Vevo, Viki – which airs Japanese anime and a range of Korean, Chinese, and Filipino dramas – and Songza, a music recommendation engine in the mould of Pandora. There's also a trio of free multimedia platforms: Plex, Avia, or RealPlayer Cloud. (For the full list, navigate over to the Chrome page on Google+.) 

Chromecast, which retails for $35, is advertised by Google as is "the easiest way to enjoy online video and music on your TV." Plug the thing into the HDMI port on your TV set, and you can wirelessly stream video from your smart phone, tablet, or computer straight onto the big screen. Pure bliss, in other words, for anyone who's got a crick in their neck from trying to watch Netflix in bed, on a laptop. 

"[I]f you’re the type who routinely watches things on a laptop and just wants an easier, cleaner way to get those things on a TV, the Chromecast is a no-brainer," Nilay Patel of the Verge wrote in a largely positive review of Chromecast from July. "Think of it as a wireless display cable for your laptop and you’ll get the potential immediately – there’s a reason all these companies have been trying to put a browser on TV for the past 15 years." 

Speaking to CNET, Rio Caraeff, the CEO of Vevo, called Chromecast a natural fit for the Vevo player. But in the future, he predicted, the hardware required to beam content from phone or laptop or tablet to television will be incorporated into TV sets themselves. 

"I believe that the vast majority of people on the planet will use their mobile device as the set-top box to get video to the television," he said. "We're going through a very rapid transition period of experimentation, of game consoles and awkward hockey pucks and lots of HDMI dongles and appendages. I think we'll look back in time, a year or two from now, maybe three years, and say, 'Remember when I had to buy that $49 thing, or that $99 thing?' Or: 'Remember when I had to change inputs, or remember when I used to have this thing hanging off the back of my TV?' This will seem like Stone Age type of stuff." 

[Editor's note: The original version of this article misspelled VEVO's name.]

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Google's Chromecast media player adds 10 new apps
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2013/1210/Google-s-Chromecast-media-player-adds-10-new-apps
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe