Like the title says; I decided to buy a Chromecast as a late Christmas present to myself. Observations to follow:
Purchasing
This has nothing to do with the Chromecast, but I just wanted to preface this buy saying that I'm quite impressed with Takealot. As far as I can tell, they are the only South African retailer, either online or offline, that stocks the Chromecast. They sell it for R600, which is a bit expensive compared to the US price of $35. But once I'd placed the order, they delivered it really quickly. They had it couriered to my doorstep, in one working day, over the holiday period, with no delivery fee. They even sent me an sms the night before to let me know roughly what time it would be there, and it arrived right on schedule. 10/10, would buy from them again.
Set-up
Technically, the Chromecast is an interesting device. It's basically just a small plastic stick with one output (HDMI) and one input (wifi). It has a USB port, but that's only for power.
So how do you enter your wifi settings, if the only way to communicate with the device is through wifi? I'm not completely sure, but I think that it's set up to use wifi direct out of the box. When you go into the Chromecast app, it disconnects from your home wifi, connects to the Chromecast using wifi direct, and sends the Chromecast the details needed to connect to your home wifi (except for the password, which you have to enter manually). Then it breaks the wifi direct connection, and both devices connect to your home network.
In theory this makes it extremely simple to set up. All you have to do is enter your wifi password on your phone and it should just work. Unfortunately, in my case, it initially refused to connect. It said that it can't find my wifi network, without giving any indication of why or what I could do to fix it. Since they've tried to keep the setup process super simple, there are no network settings at all to change, which resulted in intense frustration when it didn't work. I spent an entire afternoon fiddling with settings on my router to try to fix it, and nothing worked. I had pretty much given up, and then, at some point, it suddenly started working. I have no idea what caused the problem, or what fixed it, but it seems to be working consistently now.
To be fair, I tried Googling the problem, and found a few other people who suffered from it, but not too many, so it seems pretty rare. Since then, I've tried using it at several friends' houses, and it has worked consistently every time. When it works correctly, setup is a breeze. Your parents could probably manage it: it's basically just a case plugging in the device and entering your wifi password into the Chromecast app. (One small wrinkle is that you can't download the Chromecast app from the Play Store since it isn't officially supported in South Africa, so you have to find an alternative site to download the apk from.)
The User Experience
Once the Chromecast is set up and working, this is the screen you see:
The Chromecast itself has no UI at all. Just an ever-changing slideshow of beautiful photographs, with some unobtrusive text showing the time and the name of your Chromecast. It actually makes for a decent digital photo-frame; you can just leave it on in the background while doing other things, and occasionally admire the pretty pictures. It reminds me of the 1990s-era vision (pushed by people like Bill Gates) of how everyone in the future was going decorate their homes using huge LCD screens to display artworks.
The Chromecast app itself does nothing except for setting up the device. The actual interface is completely controlled by the content-providing apps on your smartphone, tablet, or laptop. For example, if you go into the Youtube app, and you're on a network that contains a Chromecast, you'll see a new button:
If you press this button and select your Chromecast, then every video you play will screen on your TV instead of your phone. It really is extremely simple and, dare I say, Apple-like.
...
Purchasing
This has nothing to do with the Chromecast, but I just wanted to preface this buy saying that I'm quite impressed with Takealot. As far as I can tell, they are the only South African retailer, either online or offline, that stocks the Chromecast. They sell it for R600, which is a bit expensive compared to the US price of $35. But once I'd placed the order, they delivered it really quickly. They had it couriered to my doorstep, in one working day, over the holiday period, with no delivery fee. They even sent me an sms the night before to let me know roughly what time it would be there, and it arrived right on schedule. 10/10, would buy from them again.
Set-up
Technically, the Chromecast is an interesting device. It's basically just a small plastic stick with one output (HDMI) and one input (wifi). It has a USB port, but that's only for power.
So how do you enter your wifi settings, if the only way to communicate with the device is through wifi? I'm not completely sure, but I think that it's set up to use wifi direct out of the box. When you go into the Chromecast app, it disconnects from your home wifi, connects to the Chromecast using wifi direct, and sends the Chromecast the details needed to connect to your home wifi (except for the password, which you have to enter manually). Then it breaks the wifi direct connection, and both devices connect to your home network.
In theory this makes it extremely simple to set up. All you have to do is enter your wifi password on your phone and it should just work. Unfortunately, in my case, it initially refused to connect. It said that it can't find my wifi network, without giving any indication of why or what I could do to fix it. Since they've tried to keep the setup process super simple, there are no network settings at all to change, which resulted in intense frustration when it didn't work. I spent an entire afternoon fiddling with settings on my router to try to fix it, and nothing worked. I had pretty much given up, and then, at some point, it suddenly started working. I have no idea what caused the problem, or what fixed it, but it seems to be working consistently now.
To be fair, I tried Googling the problem, and found a few other people who suffered from it, but not too many, so it seems pretty rare. Since then, I've tried using it at several friends' houses, and it has worked consistently every time. When it works correctly, setup is a breeze. Your parents could probably manage it: it's basically just a case plugging in the device and entering your wifi password into the Chromecast app. (One small wrinkle is that you can't download the Chromecast app from the Play Store since it isn't officially supported in South Africa, so you have to find an alternative site to download the apk from.)
The User Experience
Once the Chromecast is set up and working, this is the screen you see:
The Chromecast itself has no UI at all. Just an ever-changing slideshow of beautiful photographs, with some unobtrusive text showing the time and the name of your Chromecast. It actually makes for a decent digital photo-frame; you can just leave it on in the background while doing other things, and occasionally admire the pretty pictures. It reminds me of the 1990s-era vision (pushed by people like Bill Gates) of how everyone in the future was going decorate their homes using huge LCD screens to display artworks.
The Chromecast app itself does nothing except for setting up the device. The actual interface is completely controlled by the content-providing apps on your smartphone, tablet, or laptop. For example, if you go into the Youtube app, and you're on a network that contains a Chromecast, you'll see a new button:
If you press this button and select your Chromecast, then every video you play will screen on your TV instead of your phone. It really is extremely simple and, dare I say, Apple-like.
...
