Your experience with latest chromecast

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gzt

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Topic # 239503 21-Jul-2018 07:34

The orginal chromecast v1 rev 1 years ago was not great.

Is the latest one Chromecast v2 hockey puck working well? I'm thinking ethernet will make it reliable.

Are there other devices in this category I should consider? It's for an occasional use tv. I'd actually prefer to pick up a cheap smart TV and eliminate the extra cords and complexity but the cheap smart tv does not yet exist in the NZ market..

jamesrt

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Reply # 2059757 21-Jul-2018 08:17

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Why do you say the v1 “was not great”?

We’ve got one; it works fine.

We’ve also got a v2; and TBH notice no difference.

Majority of use = Netflix streaming; with some YouTube and for a while the v1 was used to stream audio only. (We bought a decent Bluetooth speaker after a while)

NzBeagle

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Reply # 2059762 21-Jul-2018 08:27

What sort of things are you after from it? Use music streaming, YouTube, Netflix, Play movies, Tvnz streaming, all with no issues. Had all ver1 until ver2 came out, only replaced as I had so many people wanting one I would just sell them my ver1 cheaply. I use both the standard and the audio ones with no issues. But I guess it depends what you're wanting it to do as to what you experience will be like.

TonyR1973

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Reply # 2060113 21-Jul-2018 18:46

I have a Chromecast v2 on a dumb TV (I didn't want a device that might outwit me Skynet style). I only use it for YouTube, Chrome browser tabs and entire computer desktop. Works flawlessly.

richms

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Reply # 2060116 21-Jul-2018 18:54

Wifi on the first gen was terrible. Also even with good speeds I have seen it stutter sometimes when casting twitch to the old one. New one has better wifi and doesnt seem to drop the frames on 1080p 60 streams that I can see.

Richard rich.ms

Gurezaemon

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Reply # 2060117 21-Jul-2018 19:00

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richms:

Wifi on the first gen was terrible. Also even with good speeds I have seen it stutter sometimes when casting twitch to the old one. New one has better wifi and doesnt seem to drop the frames on 1080p 60 streams that I can see.

I had no problem with the Wi-Fi on my Gen 1 chromecast, but it almost inevitably lost the connection with the device controlling it, which got frustrating after a while when wanting to pause Netflix to go get a drink or whatever. A great concept, but let down in the execution.

Hammerer

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Reply # 2060128 21-Jul-2018 19:18

My third attempt to reply here so necessarily short because I forgot to copy my earlier comments.

I avoid smart TV because Chromecast gives me the smarts I need without the lack of timely updates and continuing support.

We have v2 Chromecast (5GHz FullHD) and Chromecast Ultra (cabled 4K) and the same issues generally arise on cabled and wireless:

Random disconnects and resets are often due to power supply issues. So I wouldn't get the power from TV USB ports.
Setup works great if it works first time. Almost every time it doesn't I'm in for several rounds of issues that aren't fixed by resets.
For the above reason, once setup I try to avoid moving them to another device temporarily. I had need for this but it just has not been worthwhile and I'm going to buy another one so each is dedicated to one device. That is without an HDMI switch: adding in an HDMI switch seems to exacerbate some existing issues.
ISP router settings can affect connections e.g. I've had this problem on Spark routers and correcting the settings didn't make the issues go away completely.