OMG, a Functional Remote!
An Apple TV User’s Thoughts on the Chromecast with Google TV
As a longtime subscriber to YouTube TV, they recently sent me one of the new Chromecast devices free with my subscription. A nice gift ($50 value) and a nice touch. As a longtime Apple TV user (who has had a few various iterations of the Chromecast in the past), a few thoughts:
(Update 1/6/21: I’m having some major issues with this thing.)
The Pebble Puck
The hardware remains fun. Similar to designs in the past, it’s a small rounded object — more an oval pebble this time and less like a round hockey puck — that dangles from the HDMI cord. On one hand, it’s nice: there’s no wondering if it came with an HDMI cord, or where that might be. On the other, it’s weird: why does it dangle? I’m assuming it’s because the HDMI inputs on your TV might be too close together for this to be a stick. Still, it’s a bit of an odd design.
It would be amazing if you didn’t have to also plug it into power. Alas, you do (which I recognize is an HDMI thing, not a Chromecast thing).
Also a little weird that it comes in three color options — white, pink, and blue — when it is likely to be behind your TV plugged into the aforementioned HDMI port (though I suppose some are on the side of TVs). I guess this is more about the color of the remote, which matches the device. I got the white one (though I didn’t have an option for my free gift).
A Remote Return to Form
I appreciate the white one as it fully differentiates it from the Apple TV remote, which, of course, is all black. And all-awful. My hatred of the Apple TV remote has long been known, but the Chromecast remote just highlights it further. To be clear, it’s not like the Chromecast remote is some sort of magic device, it’s just… a sort of normal, small remote. It doesn’t try to be too clever with say, a touch-sensitive area. Which is one of those things that sounds great on paper — and looks nice — but is beyond frustrating to use.
That said, the Chromecast remote does have a weird circular area at the top which implies it’s a moveable wheel, like the old iPods used to have, but it actually doesn’t rotate at all. Instead, it’s a pretty standard directional pad.
Also a little weird, but many people will appreciate: it takes AAA batteries. You know, like your remote from 25 years ago. I would have preferred one I could charge (like the Apple TV one which you only have to charge after months of use), but again, I think regular users will appreciate this — one less thing to worry about charging.
Like the Apple TV remote, the Chromecast remote allows you to control the volume on your TV, which is nice. And the buttons for that are actually on the side, like they might be on a smartphone. I think this is actually clever in a good way. With the remotes of yesteryear, I’m sure I wasn’t alone in constantly hitting the channel change button when meaning to hit the volume change button. This solves that though it’s funny that it’s also not a problem on the other side of the equation on remotes, as the concept of channels doesn’t really exist anymore (well, sort of — more on that in a bit) and so there is also no need for a channel-changing button.
Instead of channels these days there are apps. Or more to the point, services. And like many other modern remotes, Chromecast includes dedicated buttons for the most popular ones: in this case, Netflix and YouTube. (Yes, you can remap them if you’d like.)
Again, this remote is not anything revolutionary — it’s actually sort of re-inventing the wheel in a good sense of the phrase! The Apple TV remote ruined remotes — though you get why they tried to do this as most remotes are a jumbled mess of under-utilized buttons — this tries to un-ruin them and does a decent enough job of it. My favorite part is also something decidedly old school: a mute button. Thank you for including this, Google.¹
Google TV
Yes, this is at least the third iteration of a product called “Google TV” — this time as the system/UI that runs on the Chromecast. Why they don’t just call this whole thing “Google TV” again, I don’t know. Does anyone know/care about the technical part of Chromecast? I’m guessing they do not. But if you really want to tout it, this could be the ‘Google TV with Chromecast’, instead it’s the other way around.
Still, the new system/UI is nice. Again, it’s nothing too revolutionary. It’s similar to the Apple TV UI in a way, but more information dense, which I appreciate. It’s also less app/channel focused and more content-focused, which I also like. It’s sort of like if the Apple TV app on the Apple TV (yes, this is hilariously confusing on Apple’s part) was the main UI of that device.
Google TV seems to work with all of the services I use — including, soon, Apple TV+ — and it was easy enough to auth into all of them. Once you do this, the system does a good job serving up content you might be interested in the main UI. Though it also, rather annoyingly, saves one of the featured content slots for an ad — a show/movie being sponsored — this is Google, after all.
I found clicking on a piece of content to watch it a bit clunky. It’s clear that the content chiclet is just a shortcut to the app on which the content resides. As such, clicking on those buttons very visibly opens the app — say, Amazon Prime Video — rather than just jumping right into it. I think Apple gets around this by hosting the video itself, if memory serves. But it’s also presumably why Netflix doesn’t let them showcase their content in their UI — Google TV does — well, did?
Google Assistant
Obviously Google Assistant is a key part of Google TV — and yes, it’s the most prominent button on the remote. You hold it down to invoke the Assistant and it works just as it does elsewhere — which is to say, very well. Certainly better than Siri. They have some pretty nice cards to showcase things like the weather forecast on top of the Google TV UI.
The search ability also seems to perform well — as you would hope, again this is Google! A search the other night for “Christmas movies” brought up both the content you’d expect and some interesting ideas we weren’t expecting, in a good way.
The Grid
One last element of the software which I appreciate is the return of a TV Guide or cablebox-like grid of channels. This works because this works with YouTube TV, which is my cord cutting platform of choice, as noted above. On the Apple TV, the YouTube TV UI is a mess. It’s less of a mess here, and again, the grid UI is a welcome return to form.
In Conclusion
The old version of Chromecast I had was mildly confusing as there wasn’t really a UI. It was more or less a dongle so that you could stream content to it from your phone. This new Chromecast with Google TV makes a lot more sense out of the box, as you can use it out of the box.
It’s also a good deal at $50, versus $179 or $199 depending on your storage options for the Apple TV 4K. Yes. there is a version of Apple TV that’s a mere $149 — snicker. It lacks 4K and you lack sense if you’re paying that much for such a device.
I suspect the next Apple TV will be a lot more interesting at its insanely high price points given everything Apple is doing with their own silicon. And certainly if it has a more gaming bent, as has been rumored. Though I’ve been waiting for this for years and what we’ve gotten is underwhelming to date, at best. But again, part of that is due to the truly awful Apple TV remote. And the rumors suggest that will be corrected soon too.
Anyway, for now, the Chromecast with Google TV is a pretty great, cheap alternative to Apple’s box. I have less up-to-date knowledge on how it compares to the more direct competition from Roku or Amazon with the Fire TV, but the consensus seems to be that it compares very favorably. And I think that’s certainly going to be true if you use YouTube TV, as I do.
¹ For what it’s worth, the button to change television inputs doesn’t seem to work at all for me.
