Do you remember where you were when Google announced the Chromecast?
I do. I was in our online chatroom hanging with the Plex crew when the news broke. We realized immediately that the diminutive little dongle and Plex would be a match made in heaven. We simply couldn’t imagine an easier (or cheaper) way to fling your media onto every big screen in the house. The entire team ran off to buy Chromecasts immediately, and soon we were shipping extras to our colleagues who didn’t manage to buy them before online stores ran out.
I’m happy to tell you that over the last few months, we’ve been working closely with Google to bring Plex to the Chromecast. It’s an honor for us to be among the first handful of apps on the device, and it’s been great working with Google – we’ve never met a smarter or more energetic group of people to work with.
One of the most interesting aspects of adding Chromecast support to Plex was integrating it with our existing support for remote players and remote control. We wanted to make sure that the user experience across Plex players, AirPlay devices (from iOS), and Chromecast devices was both seamless and rich, and we took the opportunity to greatly enhance our own remote control support in the process. You’ll notice a much better experience when flinging media or remote controlling all our players, including Plex Home Theater, the Roku, Windows 8, iOS, Android, and of course our web player.
The Chromecast platform itself is super cool; the device runs the Chrome browser, and each “application” is essentially a web page that the controller apps talk to. This is a really flexible model, as it allows for arbitrary sorts of applications on the big screen (one of Google’s examples is a Tic-tac-toe game).
We’re excited to be launching today with support for Chromecast on iOS, Android, and on the web! We have support for video, and we’ll be releasing support for casting photos and music very shortly. Note that for an initial period, the Chromecast feature is only available to our beloved PlexPass users, who get exclusive access to many new features.
Make sure you have the latest media server installed, and go have fun with your Chromecast! And if you use Android, make sure you have the latest Plex for PlexPass release or download it from our forums.
Did you know Barkley is a huge fan of the Chromecast? Well, now you do. And he’s picky about his consumer electronics, too.