Re:Chromecast Teardown
by gcb0 on Tuesday August 06, 2013 @05:55AM
(#6165683)
Not really. The Chinese counterpart cram in much better CPUs and overall hardware and are on the market for several months already. Did I mention cheaper?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Chromecast Teardown
by winter_blue on Tuesday August 06, 2013 @06:24AM
(#6165745)
Which Chinese counterpart?
Just google for "android hdmi". They were all over Hong Kong/Taiwan when I was there earlier this year, and generally just had the latest dual-core Android phone guts in a similar tiny plug-in case.
Re:Chromecast Teardown
by mathgorges on Tuesday August 06, 2013 @07:51AM
(#6166032)
The cheapest one I could find was $37 with free shipping to the US.
I found this by using google shopper to search for "android hdmi" and sorting low to high.
Here: http://dx.com/p/m2a-android-4-0-network-media-player-w-wi-fi...
Basically double the specs of Chromecast with a USB expansion slot. That said this seems to just run android with wifi on your TV. I'm not an Android person so I'm not sure what the quality of streaming apps are to compare to Chromecast but they serve different purposes.
This is more like an Android version of AppleTV, and as an AppleTV owner I can say that navigating with a remote is horrible, I only use it for Airplay and XBMC. So there's the issue of how usable is Android stick (the pictures look cool but don't say much).
There are many simple media players/streamers out there, in much the same size unit and some with noticeably higher spec (though most probably with noticeably lower build quality) for more-or-less the same price. Most are basic Android devices I think.