Wired chromecast alternative?

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lilfiend

Supreme [H]ardness
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Nov 28, 2008
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I love the way the chromecast works but my wireless stutters just enough to annoy the crap out of me. Is there anything out there that functions the same but plugs into an ethernet port? If not I'm probably just going to go full htpc on it and give up with these low power streaming devices.
 
I believe the Amazon Fire Tv and Western Digital Tv both have Ethernet ports.
I'm not so sure of their functions compared to a Chromecast as I have neither, but it might be worth looking in to.
 
roku still has an Ethernet port and you can stream to it with an android phone or windows pc....
 
I run a Raspberry Pi and RasPlex ( http://www.rasplex.com/ ) on my TV, wired in via 100mbps ethernet. Works wonderfully. I can open up the Plex webpage on my laptop, and tell it to stream to the TV as if it were a chromecast. RasPlex doesn't support everything that the chromecast does, but for most media stuff, it works beautifully.
 
iamwhoiamtoday said:
I run a Raspberry Pi and RasPlex ( http://www.rasplex.com/ ) on my TV, wired in via 100mbps ethernet. Works wonderfully. I can open up the Plex webpage on my laptop, and tell it to stream to the TV as if it were a chromecast. RasPlex doesn't support everything that the chromecast does, but for most media stuff, it works beautifully.
Click to expand...

I have an rpi and didn't know about rasplex, I'll have to give it a try but in the past its not been able to handle high bitrate videos.
 
What is the wireless AP or router that you are using?

I have a chromecast and it works really, really well.

Of course I am running a ClearOS box as my router and a Cisco 1252 AP.

Any good N or AC router that can easily handle all the devices in your house should not give you any trouble whatsoever as long as you have a nice strong signal to the chromecast.
 
Wouldn't it be cheaper and better to just get a new router instead of a new streaming stick?
 
lilfiend said:
I have an rpi and didn't know about rasplex, I'll have to give it a try but in the past its not been able to handle high bitrate videos.
Click to expand...

The beautiful thing about plex is that the server can transcode the video on the fly to something the target device supports. It does need a bit of a grunty cpu on the backend if you want to do 1080p transcodes though.
 
I use plex as my main media source as it is, it has a 2600k dedicated to it.

My wireless performs poorly because we have 5 chromecasts, several wireless cameras, and 2 microwaves that kills portions of the wireless randomly. I have 3 ubiquity AP's. The 2.4ghz spectrum is just totally overloaded and chromecasts don't use 5ghz.
 
lilfiend said:
The 2.4ghz spectrum is just totally overloaded and chromecasts don't use 5ghz.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's my main complaint about the chromecast. No 5Ghz support renders it almost unusable in some environments. Like say.. apartment complexes given that there'll be a ton of APs and only three real channels to use. 5Ghz has a bunch more channels available to it.
 
I gave rasplex a try and its better than I thought it would be. Its fairly slow if I use it on its own but I can use it just like a chromecast from the plex app and it works beautifully.
 
Have you considered getting a better router or a second router to bridge the wireless and have one of them right next to the chromecast or close enough?
 
If you can get your hands on a Google ADT-1, it has ethernet. It only allows some apps to cast to it by default, but if you root and edit the build.prop, you can cast any app to it that has built in cast support. Or, wait for the upcoming Razer Android TV. You should be able to do the same, without the need to root and edit the build.prop.
 
Make sure you're using 802.11n and not 802.11g. Works fine here for WIFI streaming 1080p.
 
lilfiend said:
I have an rpi and didn't know about rasplex, I'll have to give it a try but in the past its not been able to handle high bitrate videos.
Click to expand...

Plex is primarily for streaming local media from a PC. Both systems would need to be wired to avoid stutter.
 
Running a FireTV on wired connection, no complaints other than it can't play media streamed from my PC.
 
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