The TV streaming market is a pretty volatile and unpredictable place. From set-top boxes to streaming dongles to smart TVs to smart home projectors, you can never tell which device category will become the king of the living room. The pendulum swings from one end to another, and trends come and go faster than in any other consumer electronics segment. Now we might be facing the end of one such trend, at least if Google’s old dongle is to be the trendsetter.
Although it might not be the first one, the Google Chromecast definitely popularized HDMI streaming dongles that other brands like Roku and even Amazon have tried to get into. That device, however, has been continued and is now officially out of stock, which probably raises the question of whether such devices are, in general, on their way out as well.
Designer: Google
To be blunt, Google doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to its TV-related endeavors, going from a more general “casting” experience to a short-lived Android TV platform to the current Google TV system. Ironically, what remained consistent through the years is the Chromecast devices, even though those have also undergone a few different design iterations.
On paper, HDMI streaming dongles like the Chromecast, Roku Streaming Stick, and Amazon Fire Stick offer the best of all worlds. It could turn any display into a smart TV with streaming capabilities and the ability to receive “casted” content from phones and computers. They had very small, inconspicuous bodies, so they rarely caught your attention and could even be taken with you on trips.
That design, however, also limited what the dongles could do, at least in terms of hardware performance. After all, you can only cram so much in a device the size of a USB stick or a pebble. That’s where the new Google TV Streamer comes in. Launched last year, it offers not only double the RAM and quadruple the internal storage, but it also gets a beefier processor that lets it handle more intensive types of content, like 4K and different HDR standards, without breaking a sweat.
Of course, that also meant that the Google TV Streamer could no longer be a “dongle” and is now closer to a set-top box, swinging the trend back to that side. With almost all TVs getting connectivity features and with set-top boxes becoming more common again, the Chromecast’s final run might also spell the end for others like it, bringing the streaming dongle chapter to a close.
The post Chromecast with Google TV is no more, marking the end of an era first appeared on Yanko Design.