Check with a store local to where you will be and see if they have them in stock.


Don't forget to subtract the 3 month Netflix subscription which brings the price down to $11 (assuming that Google didn't get a deal on the 3 month subscriptions).

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B329 Safari/8536.25)

Scott, the keyword is "global".

I've no problem with stock selling out, I do have a problem with Google consistently launching US only on Day 1 and long delays for European and other major market rollout.

And it so it was that Google canceled the free 3 months of Netflix.

After giving away 250,000 of them. I doubt anyone would have seen this sell out so quickly.

Please post if you find good chrome extensions for avi and mkv.

Otherwise, you can always convert to mp4. Handbrake is my current favorite.

Apparently anybody connected to the same WiFi network can access one's Chromecast, making it less than ideal for use in a hotel.

All the more reason to use a travel router.

Are you streaming video off a site? All the sites that I have tried (hulu, mtv, spike tv, history channel...) the video kept freezing the skipping. This is from chrome browser tab cast. Netflix and YouTube (with the built-in cast) works fine but the browser tab casting (beta) is not really working for video for me.

Maybe it works better for you when you are on a Chromebook? I was running the latest Chrome browser on my Windows 7 64 bits HP Envy 17 notebook.

I wonder if the dongle can be setup on Hotel's wireless network. When I did the setup, it disconnect my laptop from the router and connected it directly to the dongle..and from there it asked for the wireless router SSID and password to setup the dongle's internet connection. If you are at a hotel, you will need to go into a webpage to sign in to the network.. I don't think the dongle could do that. You will probably need to bring your own wireless router.

I didn't know you could drag and drop local video into Chrome tab to play. Does it play smoothly on Chromecast? I couldn't get any of the online streaming on chrome tab to play smoothly. Lots of skipping and freezing. One way I could make local video play on chromecast is to upload them to YouTube and then play them from YouTube. YouTube and NetFlix works fine.

What is involved in getting the Chromecast on the hotel network anyway. You need to get it to find the AP and then go through their validation stuff. will you need to hook up to the USB Port on the device and preprogram it each time?

Here is how the chromecast is setup.

1) Plug it into the TV and connect to USB power. I read that if you have HDMI 1.4 you don't need USB power, but I guess my TV does not have it. I have to plug in the USB to the USB port on my TV.

2) Now you need to download the Chromecast app on your phone or your PC. I did it on my laptop. Once you start the Chromecast app, it will disconnect your laptop from your wireless router and connect it directly to the Chromecast dongle.

3) Once you are connected to the Chromecast, it will ask you for the router SSID (drop down to select if there are more than 1) and password.

4) Connected and you are done.

I think #3 above could be a problem at a hotel. If the wireless connection requires you to open a webpage to enter room number and such.. I don't think the Chromecast setup could handle it. You will probably need to bring your own wireless router to connect to the internet first and then setup the Chromecast.

Given that it is capable of some direct wifi communication with the pc/tablet, it would be nice if you could stream local content directly without having to go through a router.

That's what I am thinking too. Maybe someone could come up with an app on Android and iOS to stream video straight to the Chromecast dongle. ;) Maybe the next update of the MXPlayer...

Well, I've used DLNA for quite some time - I can easily stream video from my Android device to an XBOX or other DLNA compatible renderer using BubbleUpnp (http://bit.ly/18DJR79) from MX Player.

However, that requires that both devices be on the same network. I have looked around and not found anything that uses DLNA to stream directly from device to renderer/TV, so I expect that for technical reasons it might be difficult.

I backordered one from Amazon. Right now I have a Roku XS, a Wii and an old laptop to stream from but this makes a convenient solution for stuff from your phone/tablet. I expect that given the Google backing developers should create apps compatible with Chromcast with reasonable expediency.