Still Smart, Still Good? Chromecast 4K with Google TV

if you have an older Dumber TV like my parents do there's no need to go out and spend a ton of money getting a new TV all you need is one of these bad boys to make it smart and new again hey friends welcome back to the channel today we are looking at getting more out of an old TV by using this because well my parents need Netflix on their antique TV and apparently it's pretty good for a newer TV too compared to whatever operating system you get out of the box so my goal today is to turn this 40 inch 1080p full HD TV into a smart TV and to teach my parents how to use Netflix so we're going to see how easy it is to set up the user interface some of the essential apps you might want to use as well as some of the additional features you might be interested in but first let's take a look at what's in the box [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] so first there's the dongle this comes in three colors I have the snow it also comes in sky and sunrise so we've got HDMI on one end and on the other end we have USBC we've moved on from micro USB which is excellent and now with the USBC we can do more than just charge this thing so we'll get into more details on that later next we have the remote this is the remote sorry minimalist right up my alley got the Direction buttons here selector in the middle got the Google Assistant back button mute home Netflix YouTube power button and then the source selector in the middle that's the microphone so I've got the volume buttons very Sleek had the power cord USB on one end USB on the other power pack and then two AAA batteries for the remote I like how everything is color matched even the batteries great attention to detail and this is still more than what comes with an iPhone and we have the instruction manual here as well so the remote here is really the game changer we all know what chromecasts are we plug the dongle into the TV and then we can play whatever is on our phone on the TV but with this remote they've added Google TV which is essentially an operating system for your TV maybe the Chromecast with Google TV should really be called the Chromecast with remote and this means you no longer need your phone to watch things on the TV how many times am I going to say the word TV today it's very much like an Apple TV or something of that sort but much more affordable this is 99 Australian dollars or 49 US Dollars and I'm sure you can get it for much cheaper on sale seeing is believing so let's get this thing set up first let's put these batteries in and now let's head to the TV there's only a few pieces here so it should be really easy it can't go wrong so all we have to do is plug the dongle into the TV using the HDMI into a spare slot plug the other end into the power pack and apparently you can't just plug the power end into a USB on your TV like you could do with previous versions because this one needs a lot more power for power in remote open battery is in I feel like Gordon Ramsay with his cooking instructions now let's see if it works make sure you're on the right channel for your TV for the HDMI port that it's plugged into so for me it's HDMI 2. press the power button here so once you connect the power it should be on automatically so I have the 4K Chromecast here at 60 frames per second which is actually overkill for this particular TV because it can only support a glorious 1080p but it's future proof for the next TV and you can also get a 1080p version of the Chromecast but it only comes in snow so just keep that in mind if you need to know for flexing reasons anyway let's follow the instructions and get this set up so the first thing we need to do is we can see on the screen is to pair the remote so what we need to do is hold the back and the home button at the same time three two one pretty straightforward and now we need to set it up so you can do this directly on the TV but it's much easier if you do it on the phone by using the Google home app because we all know what a nightmare it is to try and type things using a remote so go ahead and download the Google home app open that up you'll either see setup Chromecast pop-up or just go to the plus button and then add a new device which is what we're going to do here agreed to the terms select the room then we want to connect to the Wi-Fi once that's connected we need to sign on using our Google account so just type that in so next we're going to select the services that we want we have the YouTube selected already I'm going to go ahead select Netflix it's like Spotify if you forget something it's no big deal you can go to the app store later and find the app that you need next we'll set the ambient mode this is what happens when you're not using your TV what goes on in the display I'm just going to choose the art gallery here and you'll see a selection of the different types art I'm just going to stay with everything keep it nice and diverse all right now we're all done on the phone we can continue the rest on the TV itself select the volume and then you test it with the volume buttons make sure it works so this Chromecast actually supports Adobe Atmos but you need the right speakers for that and also supports Adobe Vision as well and you need to have the right TV to take the advantage of those settings so the next step is turning it off and on again the solution to all our problems turn it off wait for eight seconds oh I forgot to count I think that's about eight turn it back on okay that's all working all right cool now we wait for it to update everything to install and we're ready to rock I think it's finally ready everything's set up let's have a look around so out the top menu we have our movies our TV shows our apps all that stuff then underneath that in the middle of the screen we have some recommendations for us and as we go down we can see our apps there so this is all very Sleek very intuitive the first thing I have to say is that this remote is very responsive which is crucial because it makes the experience so much nicer and even From The Far Side of the room look there's no issue it's really a game changer by having this remote and just removing that small friction is a huge quality of life Improvement it's the physical buttons I tell you so let's test out the Google Assistant there's a button on your remote it just press and hold that down by the looks of it what's the top movies right now so good to see that it can understand my accent I don't know what any of these movies are so either I have been living under a rock or these are not the top rated movies but the important thing is it can understand what I'm saying and you know maybe I just need to ask some better questions another cool thing is everything with the Google assistant is here in one spot so if you have other smart devices connected like your lights cameras and other things like that you can control it all from here and the way this is done is that it brings all your streaming services together so if you have multiple subscriptions like Netflix you'll stand your Disney plus it'll all be here one place you can browse it all without having to go into the app itself it's like a universal watch list you can create for things you want to watch so if you go to this one here we can see things like the rating you can add it to a watch list you can even give it a rating so a thumbs up or down to train the algorithm so it knows what you want I really like how it has the Rotten Tomatoes score here and I think it would be even better if you can have other scores like IMDb and other independent ratings because you go into Netflix all you can see is what's trending which just means it's what other people are watching doesn't really mean if it's any good or not so I really like seeing these ratings and scores here but speaking of Netflix let's have a look at some of the essential features and apps that you might want to use the first thing I want to say is that if you didn't select your in the beginning or wasn't there you can go to the App Store and download it now and then you have two ways to access it for Netflix you can either go to the app and click into it here or luckily on the remote there's a dedicated Netflix button you can just click that and we're in so of course the first time using it will need a login so again you see the screen come up and again it's a nightmare to type anything on the remote so you can do that or you can use your phone what you need to do is go and download Google TV which is different to the Google home app we had before and we can type it in directly into the screen so you can see it come up there enter your login details log in and once you're in everything should look very familiar because this is exactly how it would show up on your other devices as well so next let's have a look at YouTube because I want to make sure that my parents can watch my videos here and again we have that dedicated button on the remote so we can just click that to go straight to Youtube again very familiar nice and easy let's go to search let's make sure this is working all right this looks familiar let's have a look at this one stop all right next thing we might want to do is listen to some music so again go back to the home navigate to Spotify which is what I want to try here so you can see it's not on the list so let's go to all apps here there we go Spotify is down the bottom so I'm pretty sure you can rearrange the screen here so all we have to do is hold the select button and there we go now we can move it in a position where we want it let's move it right here and let's go into it there we go so same with Netflix you just have to log in the first time you use it and then everything's pretty straightforward and of course streaming and casting videos from your phone so this still works as it did as it was originally intended for just find the video on your phone on whatever app you have and then press the cast button choose your Chromecast and then it should play on the screen so the cool thing here with what we have now with the Google TV and the remote is that so you can start something on your phone and continue to watch it on the TV you no longer need to have your phone with you because it works by itself the other thing you might want to look at if you're my parents is looking at your photos and you need it nice and big on the screen so you can see all the details so you can either look through Google photos if you have that set up which my parents don't some money to help them with that later or you can connect up an external device as I was talking about earlier so this might be a good time to talk about the additional features you might be interested in using this USBC Port you can use not just for charging as I was saying earlier you can use it for a whole lot of different other reasons so for example you can plug in a dongle or Hub which can connect a whole bunch of other things to like ethernet you can connect SD cards or USBs for photos you might want to see so the only thing to keep in mind is make sure you supply enough power because it needs to power everything that's on this dongle or Hub that you're connecting to your Chromecast you can also connect a webcam so you can have nice big video calls on your TV so connecting that up to your dongle as well is something you can do the other feature that's quite interesting is Bluetooth so if you want to connect some Bluetooth headphones for example my Bose qc45s then this is something we can pair to the TV and we can have the audio come directly to the headphones so what we need to do for that is go into the settings here go down to remotes and accessories we can see that our remote's already connected there so all we need to do is make sure the headphones are in pairing mode then we go set up the new device and connect and then it should all connect nice and easy you can also connect Gaming controllers if you want but unfortunately my parents are not hardcore Gamers so I don't have that to show you but let's see what we can do with the remote so let's go find a game to install and so let's try a nice classic like crossy Road just have to install that once it's installed run it and we're off that's nice and easy put it responsive does exactly what we need yeah and here we are playing it with the remote just make sure you don't get run over the only thing to know is that the Chromecast comes with about four gigabytes of storage so if you plan on installing lots of games and apps you want to keep that in mind or you can add that onto your external storage to connect through the dongle basically what we've looked at is only really scratching the surface by having this Chromecast with Google TV and this remote you're opening up the doors to a new world of possibilities for your TV just do your research Google is your friend here so what's a verdict and how does this compare this will absolutely bring new life to your old TV and in fact I think this is actually smarter than my own Smart TV so maybe I need to get one of these too how does this compare to other options unfortunately I don't own any of the other ones so I can't say from personal experience but from what I see this is comparable if not better than what's out there the Apple TV the Roku the Amazon Fire stick especially when it comes to price and the value that you can get from it so should you get one if your TV doesn't already have the functionality that this provides I think the bottom line is even though it's not new it's still one of the best options and a bargain to upgrade your TV if you want something that's simple elegant and just works I think you should just go for it Chromecast with a remote how much better does it get so I think it's safe to say that this old TV has become a whole lot smarter and now all I need to do is to teach my parents how to use this so while I do that you can check out 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Channel: Sam10X

Views: 35,197

Keywords: Sam10X, Productivity, Personal Growth, Life Optimization, Life Optimisation, Life Hack, Life Hacks, Efficiency, Effectiveness, Performance, Success, Achievement, Life Skills, Self Improvement, Productivity Tips, Productivity Hacks, Lifestyle, Lifestyle Design, chromecast, 4k, google tv, chromecast with google tv, smart tv, dongle, chromecast 4k, chromecast review, chromecast remote, roku, amazon fire stick, apple tv, roku tv, unboxing, setup, chromecast setup, google tv 4k

Id: vE9gWL-rwno

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 19 2023