Media streaming in Australia has gotten a little easier for free-to-air station Channel 9 who today has added Chromecast support to their app.
The Chromecast support has been a hotly anticipated feature request for many fans of Channel 9, since the company launched their first Android app – 9 JumpIn – back in 2014. Channel 9 re-branded their app in October last year to 9Now, before adding support for live channels in the app this year.
To incorporate Chromecast, Channel 9 partnered with video cloud services provider Brightcove to bring a best-in-class experience says Channel Nine General Manager of Product and Digital Operations Niamh Collins, who said the Chromecast support will serve almost 1.9 million customers, adding that they hoped that the additonal feature would ‘extend the footprint of service’.
Collins went on to say
We have been working hard to develop a best-in-class Chromecast experience. As the first Australian commercial free-to-air broadcaster to implement Chromecast, Nine is providing consumers with greater choice to access excellent home-grown Australian content on 9Now. Today’s launch really speaks to our wider goal of having the best experience across all sorts of devices. If you want to watch our content on the big or small screen, we have a product tailored for you.
We can only hope that the talk of more devices includes a specific Android TV app similar to that launched recently by rival Channel 7 – but with Android TV supporting Google Cast I think everyone can appreciate this as a very valid interim solution.
Channel 9 is the first to launch full Chromecast – or Google Cast technically as the protocol is known – support, with ABC’s IView app still running on their less than ideal Beta Chromecast support which is now almost 2 years old and still requires much improvement.
The Chromecast support is now available in the 9Now app on Google Play, to get it head over and install the app now.
Now they just need to drop the ridiculous need to have a login for a FTA channel’s catchup app ;).
Over here in Kiwi land the networks won’t allow Chromecast as they think it leads to piracy. Guess the Ozzy networks are a bit more progressive.
That’s crazy, who would want to pirate FTA?