The Woes of Chromecast

[mike123abc]

OK, who designed this thing?

I suppose if it works the first time out of the box it is a miracle. But, of course it did not work for me the first time. It took a *LOT* of research and searches on the internet to figure out why it was not working and how to fix it. I could use my iPhone to get it to connect to the wifi and it would show ready to broadcast but then nothing could see it on the network. I was not able to set it up with a PC for some reason.

This is compared to my Apple TV which just worked.

It was a multicast issue with my router over wifi. But, try to find this out is not easy. Why does it need multicast? Why is it designed to be so difficult? Yes I was setting it up using a business router and wifi (Cisco), and not a home router, but still apple TV, Google TV, and Roku work without issue on the network.

Well I finally found the obscure method of getting it to work and it now does work. I tried out Showtime Anytime and I found that my laptop lacks the CPU power to drive it. I have to use my desktop. Also, since my desktop has a 16:10 screen I end up with a black border around the entire image. My laptop has a 16:9 screen and it does not produce a boarder, but it stutters since the CPU is overloaded.

Oh well it was only $35. Perhaps I should not expect it to just work.

 

[Ronnie-]

I thought it was pretty easy to set up personally. Its just lacking in content alternatives at this point

 

[mike123abc]

My main problem is that it requires that multicast work on your network. And after researching my problem it looks like tons of routers do not have it turned on by default. How many people are really going to buy a bunch of these things and want to broadcast the same video to all the TVs in the house at once? I would bet that 99.999% of the end users will only ever want to use one TV. It should just say OK, your network is not setup for multicast, so you can only send it to one TV at a time. If you ever desire to do more than one then you have to go through the hassle of figuring out how to turn it on for your router.

The thing is, it does not even tell you that multicast is the problem. There is pretty much a complete lack of diagnostics or tests. You are just dumped into a FAQ page on Google.com. There should be some basic troubleshooting steps that it walks you through (the chrome app). Like first can I ping the chromecast? This would tell them if AP isolation is turned on. Then start down the multicast road and explain that it has to be turned on. Essentially with some searching you can get their page of router compatibility where you can look down the long list to find your router and it mentions a setting needed and says contact the router maker. If your router is not listed, well good luck, since it never told you that it wants to multicast.

Just having the TV screen say it is all working and ready to go and not being able to have any device find it, is not exactly user friendly.

 

[SatinKzo]

Hmm. I have setup three of them since launch. Easy process and have worked pretty much flawlessly for everything not in beta/experimental.

I have multicast control on my network and have no issues.

 

[mike123abc]

I have 2 of them. The one I installed at home worked without issue. It was the one I put in at work with a business class router that gave me the pain. As I mentioned the pain is that it does not tell you what it needs, it just sits there saying everything is good and the computers do not see it.

 

[Tampa8]

Both mine (used at both my residences) were up and running in no time at all. My older laptop has not a problem sending a solid image, and it works great on my S4 and my Tablet. I found with Slingbox the router itself can make a difference. After having some hiccups, I threw my Cisco out the window literally after I tried a Netgear and everything worked as it should, not just the Slingbox. My VOIP service never dropped again after I switched.