Great concept, but poor implementation.
1. Some apps such as Netflix insist that you have Android 4.2 or higher. That eliminates tons of useful tablets and phones out there.
2. There are very few apps that work with it.
3. The power cable is USB, but not a standard mini USB end. Why? All the USB cables sitting in my drawer could be used with it had you used a connector system that already exists.
4. Chromecast does not use your router’s DNS settings but google’s. This was done so you can’t easily use a proxy server with Chromecast and get netflix (etc) outside the intended region. To fix that you need to route requests to google’s DNS to your router’s gateway address..
eg:
ID Destination IP Address Subnet Mask Default Gateway Status Modify
1 8.8.4.4 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1 Enabled Modify Delete
2 8.8.8.8 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1 Enabled Modify Delete
3 108.175.32.0 255.255.240.0 192.168.1.1 Enabled Modify Delete
4 198.38.96.0 255.255.224.0 192.168.1.1 Enabled Modify Delete
5 198.45.48.0 255.255.240.0 192.168.1.1 Enabled Modify Delete
6 185.2.220.0 255.255.252.0 192.168.1.1 Enabled Modify Delete
7 23.246.0.0 255.255.192.0 192.168.1.1 Enabled Modify Delete
8 37.77.184.0 255.255.248.0 192.168.1.1 Enabled Modify Delete
5. You must you use a backdrop. Why? It eats up bandwidth like crazy and I am not even using the stupid thing. It uses approximately 6.5 Gb a month. Tip: To stop the Cromecast from updating and downloading backdrop images, set up a filter for https://clients3.google.com/cast/chromecast/home/ in your router. But this will disconnect Chrome casting after a period as the device thinks it is no longer on your network. What an infuriating device.
6. Incredibly unreliable. Often it hangs, won’t connect or pause features will not works. I often spend more time getting it to work, than watching. See: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/chromecast
I expected more from Google.