General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChrome TV: I was getting a little tired of watching political happenings
on my cell phone in the evening after I quit working. Then, I remembered that I had installed a Chrome TV dongle on HDMI2 on my living room TV about three years ago. We really never used it after a frustrating time when we tried to watch a movie cast from a Chromebook.
After a quick search on Google, I downloaded and installed the Google Home app on my Samsung Android phone. In it, I selected the little TV set icon and tapped "Living Room," the name I had given the dongle when I first got it. There it was. I tapped Mirror to Living Room.
The Chrome TV switched the TV's input to HDMI2 and there was my phone's display on the big screen. I navigated to the thing I wanted to watch and got to put my phone down and see and hear things much more clearly.
Later, I discovered that I could also "cast" YouTube videos to the TV set. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of telling my wife about this, and we spent the next hour watching funny dog videos.
There is good and bad to everything, it seems.
dawg day
(7,947 posts)and then I remember Youtube funny dog videos and remember.
There is joy in them!
MineralMan
(146,329 posts)People mill logs into lumber with bandsaw-style sawmills. I watch such videos sometimes. If my wife overdoes the funny dog videos, I shall cast one of my sawmill videos and she shall watch that and learn of the joy of seeing walnut crotch grain for the first time.
Problem solved.
brooklynite
(94,727 posts)...but I just run an HDMI cable from my Mac to my Samsung TV and can throw anything on my computer to the TV screen. No additional software required.
MineralMan
(146,329 posts)I don't have a Mac by the couch in the living room, nor do I have an HDMI cable running from any of my computers for that use.
Now that I've enabled my phone to cast to the Chrome TV dongle, it's very, very easy for me to watch anything I can see on the phone.
The only problem is that the TV doesn't switch back automatically to HDMI1 when I stop casting to it. I have to grab the black TV remote and change the "Source" setting.
Minor inconvenience, really.
I'm sure everyone already knows about all of this phone to TV business, but I'm an old geezer, so I'm sharing my discovery.
padfun
(1,787 posts)It works great for 3D gaming.
EDIT: I do have a GeForce 1050 which I think is minimum if you are gaming on a large TV. 1080 would be even better.
GoCubsGo
(32,088 posts)I'm lucky. My TV streams YouTube directly, so I watch Great Lakes ship cams, Cornell's feeder cams, the various Monterrey Bay Aquarium live cams, The Randi Rhodes Show.... The ship cams are much better on the big screen. Wish I could afford a 60" set.
I know what you mean about the funny dog videos. I have similar issues with cat videos, some of which include dogs.
Leith
(7,813 posts)They're all adorable as the dickens.
YouTube is endlessly entertaining. It isn't hard to bypass the inane and harmful content to find the good stuff.
Another thing I like to watch is live cams when a hurricane is approaching, even if they are knocked offline when storms really kick up.
GoCubsGo
(32,088 posts)And, the Space X rocket launches, and the Jimmy Buffet concerts when he was able to have them...
honest.abe
(8,685 posts)My kid watches YouTube dinosaur vids and all sorts of other stuff. We watch Netflix and Prime video movies. Its really cool to be able to control your tv from your mobile phone.
MineralMan
(146,329 posts)"Hey, Google! Show me funny dog videos!" or "Hey Google! Show me some French Television!"
I will not mention porn, because I don't watch porn. Some folks do, though, apparently.
honest.abe
(8,685 posts)It seems weird talking to an object not to mention the potential for getting the wrong thing if you dont pronounce things correctly.
Demsrule86
(68,667 posts)Channel which has movies. We are cord cutters and have streamed TV for years.
hunter
(38,326 posts)No cable, no satellite, no broadcast, no DVD/Blu-ray player, no remote control.
Years ago my wife and I had a DVD player, a VCR, and broadcast television. We weren't watching any broadcast television except for new epsisodes of Chuck, which I was recording.
There was a video rental shop next to our grocery store. We rented a lot of DVDs there. It's been closed for many years now and the building hasn't been occupied since. Now we rent DVDs from the Redbox inside the grocery store.
Over the years we've accumulated a large library of DVDs. I've bought many of them in thrift stores. Some we haven't watched yet.
One of our children, home from college, set us up with Netflix (on the Nintendo Wii of all things) and later sent us a Chromecast dongle. We didn't use the dongle much after we got a DVD player that worked with Netflix, but we still have it. Too lazy to change the television input source, I suppose.
I think television is the worst possible medium for news and opinion. I gave up with it in disgust sometime after 9/11. My wife and I get some news from our local public radio station (which we donate to) but mostly we read our news and opinion, and subscribe electronically to a handful of local, national, and international newspapers. I don't miss television advertising at all, especially political advertising.
Traditional broadcast television is as obsolete as video rental stores. My adult children, nephews, and nieces pay no attention to it.
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)they inject/drink bleach! to you, Mr. Man