Well, maybe “teams up” is too strong a comment as they are not literally on the same team, which sounds more like a merger. What is newsworthy is that CTV is the first Canadian broadcaster to make their content available through Google’s Chromecast device. This is great news for all you prospective cable cutters and for you non-cutters that have trouble with your PVR missing past episodes of your favorite shows. Instead of huddling around your tablet or Smartphone you can now more easily cast them to your big screen TV.
Google Chromecast
As you may or may not recall, Chromecast is Google’s answer to Apple TV and Roku. It is a slick little media streaming stick that you simply plug into an HDMI port on your TV and then play a bunch of content on your TV from your Smartphone, tablet, or computer. I have written some earlier posts that describe how it works, and have even compared it to the Roku Streaming Stick. The nice thing is you can fully control the CTV program on your TV using your Smartphone or tablet—browse, play, pause, rewind, and control the volume.
The bottom line is that Chromecast is generally the least expensive of these three media streamers, but it also has the least amount of content available. But Google being Google is intent on changing that and having CTV provide its content on their platform is a very positive step. Having said that, because Apple TV and Roku provides the capability to mirror mobile devices on to your TV, they are already able to play CTV on your TV—and they didn’t need CTV to develop that capability like Chromecast did.
CTV GO App
CTV is a Bell Media company, and one that just about every Canadian is familiar with. The CTV GO App is worth checking out if you haven’t done so already. It is free, and available for both Android and Apple devices, and will give you a great idea on what you can play through Chromecast on your TV. It has a wide variety of great shows including The Big Bang Theory, CSI, Criminal Minds, Ellen DeGeneres Show, Grey’s Anatomy, Law & Order, Gotham, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon; just to give you an idea. It even has a few movies that you can select from like Far From Home, or The Italian Job.
If you are a cable cutter, then you will only be able to watch past episodes but that is not a big deal because they tend to put them up within a day or two of airing live. Plus they can go back a fair ways. For instance The Big Bang Theory CTV has all the episodes back to Sept. 2014, but for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Kimmel they only have the last week of shows. It really depends on the show. If you are a cable or satellite subscriber, you have the added advantage of seeing any of the CTV shows live through the app so you could Chromecast at your friends house who maybe isn’t a subscriber.
Other Chromecast Apps
As you will see in my earlier reports on Chromecast their Achilles heel has been a lot less content than their main competitors, Apple and Roku. However, if you go to this site, you can see that they have a fair number of apps available. Certainly quite a few more than a year ago, and I am sure they will be continuing to add more. You can also see that there is a quite a variety of categories: TV shows, movies, games, news, social media, sports, music, etc. All of them are of course available on the Android platform, but if you are an Apple user be careful because a good number of them aren’t on IOS yet.
CTV on Chromecast is great news. Hopefully it is a sign of things to come with more broadcasters making their content available to everyone no matter where they are.
