179 points

In place of the Chromecast, the company will offer the newly announced $99.99 Google TV Streamer,

They’re replacing it with a very similar product. Nothing to see here.

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224 points
*

A more expensive, clunkier product, with a bunch of needless fluff in it.

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1 point

You mean twice the ram (1 gig more than the shield), 4 times the storage (32 gigs), and a better remote (chirping find my remote feature, programmable button, and less shitty volume buttons)?

Yep. Sure sounds worse considering it also supports all the same features of the chromecast 4k and AV1 decoding.

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74 points

My Chromecast has no storage and no remote. It’s fine.

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36 points

None of which changes the fact that it’s more expensive and clunkier, and none of which feels necessary.

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3 points

It’s also twice the price of the Onn 4k Pro (Walmart house brand) that’s built on the same chip and has the same features running the stock Google TV experience.

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-4 points

They’re supposedly using pretty much the same chipset. So the most important part is still underpowered, these Android boxes generally work fine even with 2-3GBs of RAM.

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6 points

Regular Chromecast work perfectly as YouTube jukebox.

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10 points

And ethernet port!

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27 points

I don’t need any of that. I just need a cheap dongle that can run one app

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22 points

Most of the appeal of the Chromecast is that it’s a dongle you plug in once and never have to see again. It doesn’t need high performance and 32 gigs of RAM. It needs to play video. That’s its entire purpose. It’s controlled by any phone on your wifi, it doesn’t need a remote.

For most users, this is an expensive downgrade.

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122 points

Enshitification 101

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12 points

Now with AI!

I’m not sure why they didn’t just call it the chrome cast gen whatever though.

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6 points

So you could just ask it for anything and it could make it up?

“Google, show ‘Ow! My Balls!’”

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2 points

Or literally just reuse the Android TV name

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29 points

For which they will be able to offer subscriptions in a year or 2.

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-1 points
*

Swallowed the clickbait, hook, line and sinker.

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22 points

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33 points

Similar product that costs 4 times as much and has AI features…

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3 points

The low-power streaming box is dying. It’s not completely without reason, 4k playback is actually a bit demanding.

We are in a place where the 2017 nVidia Shield is beginning to show its age and that leaves the AppleTV as the only powerful and capable consumer set top box on the market. This new option from Google will at least provide some competition and an option outside of Apple’s ecosystem.

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2 points

This $100 box from Google runs on the same SoC as the $50 streaming box from Onn (Walmart). The only major differences are the Google box as 4GB of RAM vs 3GB, a 1Gb Ethernet port instead of 100Mb (both have WiFi 6), and the Google box has a USB Type C port for power/data and would need an OTG adapter/hub while the Onn box has a Type A and a barrel plug for power.

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5 points

I cannot believe NVIDIA has essentially abandoned its SHIELD micro console line. My Shield Pro has been an amazing sideloading fiend.

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7 points

and before that they already replaced it with google tv with chromecast

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23 points

They’re replacing it with a very similar product. Nothing to see here.

Like they do with messengers every couple of years.

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4 points

Seemed monthly at one point 🤣

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14 points

Or music streaming apps.

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4 points

And? Do they plan to put all the software open source so that the millions of hardware they sold would not go to waste in some years? We should force them to by law.

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13 points

You only read the headline, didnt you?

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10 points

That’s what clickbait aims to achieve. Just make people rage. People need to learn to read the article before raging.

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2 points
*

Well, the article says: “Google says it will continue to push software and security updates to its newer devices without specifying which ones.”.

So only newer devices (and we don’t know which ones), and if you are a bit familiar with technology, you would very well know that they will just quit updating the software anyways after some time as they stopped making the whole Chromecast line.

That’s still a lot of devices that would be perfectly usable and will eventually go to waste. So imo my remark about the fact that we should have laws forcing manufacturers to make their software open source as soon as they’re no longer updated is still valid!

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8 points

I come down to these comments to have someone angrily explain it in simple terms to me.

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8 points

My god does anybody else downvote an article if it’s blatant clickbait? How does it have 520 score? You were supposed to be better than r**dit remember?

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0 points

It is a little clickbaity, but the new device isn’t the same as Chromecast.

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14 points

I know haha google graveyard funny, but over a decade of production only to be replaced by a similar product is a financial success.

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33 points

Everyone knows after any commercial success the best thing you can do is rebrand by announcing the death of the successful product \s

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6 points

Switched to apple TV already. Googles lame ad infused cheap plastic remote did the trick on me. They have to pay ME if they want a Youtube and Netflix ad laying on my table at home.

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4 points

Don’t turn your remote over or you’ll have an Apple ad laying around.

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2 points

… and suddenly Netflix disappears from it.

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