I bought a Chromecast thinking it could play videos from a network drive like XBMP, but it couldn't and I thought it was beyond useless with its buggy and slow interface.
You plugged it in once to what used to be dumb TV's and in 2-3 presses I can have whatever was on my phone on my TV, with no fanagling with a USB to HDMI dongle into an HDMI cable, which may phone may or may not even support.
And once it was playing you didn't really have to manage the connection for Youtube; Your phone could die and it'll still play since it's ultimately not actually extracting the content from your phone's network.
> I thought it was beyond useless with its buggy and slow interface.
The older Chromecasts' didn't really have an interface once you set it up. I just casted from phone, waited 5 seconds and it was done. Honestly prefer my Ultra to the newer Google TV dongles precisely because there's no unnecesary middleman interface. My phone should and did manage all of that.