After more than 6 months of gleeful streaming, the Chromecast Software Development Kit is finally being made available to the masses.
The Chromecast is likely one of the most significant, yet underappreciated products of last year. The $35 HDMI dongle receives a handoff from your device and does the brunt work of streaming and frees your device for whatever you want to do while your Netflix, Google Music, Youtube, or whatever remains viewable on your TV.
Chromecast is one of the most truly platform agnostic services as it will work from an Android phone or table, iPhone, iPad, PC or Mac using the Chrome brower + Chromecast extension. I literally replaced a laptop plugged into my TV via HDMI with a remote controlled dongle that hides nicely behind my TV. Beautiful.
Likely the biggest complaint against the simplistic streaming device has been its lack of app support. Most people use it nearly exclusively for Netflix, but there is a lot more content we would like to get off of our phones, tablets, and computers and onto our TVs.
There is a massively under-utilized second screen market that we will likely see begin to fill now, because the wait is over. Google has officially released the Chromecast SDK so developers can start hacking, tinkering, innovating, and playing around with the Chromecast and begin actually publishing new apps and releasing updates to bring support to existing applications.
Be it streaming apps that were previously denied permission to publish Chromecast functionality, or entirely unseen territory, such as second screen games second screen movie/TV apps, we will begin seeing an entirely new genre of functionality introduced in our homes.
Many developers—such as LynxFit—have already found ways to build in Chromecast functionality, but have had to wait until now to be allowed to publish their updated apps. I’m sure many others will follow as well. Something as simple as being able to multitask by sending your Twitter of Facebook feed to autoscroll from your TV while you continue playing Candy Crush would be well received.
It will be exciting to see the innovations to come, but for now, I’m completely content with continuing to stream Netflix while I wait.
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