Switched On: Casting light on the Chromecast

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Sold out for weeks after its launch, everyone seems to be in love with the Chromecast -- the ultra-cheap, ultra-small, interface-free, HDMI-toting TV appendage that stole the show from the new Nexus 7. Building beyond the DIAL device-discovery protocol that Netflix and YouTube have supported, Chromecast is a client of Google Cast, which enables the kind of second-screen control for volume and other features implemented by the device.

Google has gotten the jump on similar products such as the Plair TV dongle by natively supporting three of the most popular services to use on televisions -- Netflix, YouTube and Pandora. Furthermore, it has also enabled a backdoor to many other services by building in support for displaying Chrome tabs on a Chromecast-connected TV. In doing so, it treats the TV as an extension of the browser just as Apple's forthcoming OS X Mavericks can treat an Apple TV-connected set as another Macintosh screen.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Google

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