With growing evidence that Google will launch the Chromecast Ultra in Australia sometime in the next week or two, we’re seeing an update today to Google’s Cast API which enables the key feature of the Chromecast Ultra: 4K casting.
There’s another cool feature too, which means — put simply — that whenever a user is casting, other devices on the same network will get a notification which will allow them to control playback, too. This might be a good thing, for example, if you start casting something from your phone, but then want to change it using your tablet.
Fortunately, because we can see this going entirely wrong with families fighting over what should be on, the primary user of a Chromecast compatible device can turn the feature off.
Source: Google Developers.
I’m not convinced the notification is a good idea, at least to be enabled by default. It’s confusing for a start and it’s probably unwanted in most cases. I started casting Plex last night from my phone and my girlfriend gets a notification on her phone that Plex is casting. She didn’t do anything to start casting – she wasn’t even in the room – so she clicks stop casting to get rid of the notification. Seemed a reasonable thing to do but of course Plex stopped casting…
Can’t agree more… this is a bad idea!. I connected my chromecast onto the hotel wifi … my casts were getting killed after 10 seconds, then one person was muting the audio… i thought i was getting trolled. I hadn’t noted the update and the appearance in the notification tray before then. Now it all makes sense, essentially everyone in the hotel will get a notification item for any chromecast on it (there was one other). Like most people they will try and clear the notification – the x seeming like the logical thing to click (even though they swipe… Read more »