Mat Honan After a Day With Chromecast

Mat Honan:

Likewise, if you’re running it in a browser, Amazon Instant video, Hulu, Rdio, and HBO Go all just work. As did video from Wired, Gawker media, and Flickr slideshows. We ran photos from Facebook fullscreen. We watched a live Flash stream of a Braves game on an extremely shady bootleg site that spawned approximately a gazillion Chrome windows in the background.

Wow, that sounds way better than the built-in MLB app on Apple TV.

Content-wise, this is an interesting strategy. Rather than negotiate TV-specific deals with these providers (other than Netflix), Google is just making Chromecast look like any other instance of Chrome the web browser. I wonder what its useragent string is — will sites like Hulu and HBO Go attempt to block it? If they can block it, it’s Google TV all over again. If they can’t, how has Google accomplished this?

★ Saturday, 27 July 2013