Google's $35 Dongle Beat My Roku Preorder to the Mailbox

So Google announced Chromecast on Wednesday and the thing sold out on Amazon and at Best Buy within about a day. Thirty-five bucks, a little plastic HDMI stick, and apparently half the internet wanted one before anybody had actually used it. I ordered mine Wednesday night around 11pm and got the "currently unavailable" treatment by Thursday morning. Ive since seen listings on eBay going for $70-80, which is a pretty funny markup for a device nobody outside of Google's own demo videos has really put through its paces yet.

Heres the thing that's actually been bugging me though, and its not really about Chromecast itself. Its about Roku.

Back in January, at CES, Roku showed off a Streaming Stick, basically the same idea, a little HDMI dongle instead of a full set-top box. I preordered one. That was seven months ago. As of today it still doesn't have a real ship date that I can find anywhere on Roku's site. Meanwhile Google went from "here's a product" to "its in your living room" in about six weeks, and did it at a price that undercuts Roku's stick by fifteen dollars. Im not saying Roku is dying or whatever, I've got a Roku 3 hooked up to the bedroom TV and I like it fine, its got way more channels than Chromecast will probably ever have. But watching a company that supposedly specializes in exactly this one thing get lapped by a search engine's side project is kind of remarkable to watch happen in real time.

The other detail that's sort of funny: Chromecast at launch barely does anything. Netflix, YouTube, Google Play Movies, and casting a tab from Chrome on your desktop. That's it. No Hulu Plus, no Amazon Instant, no HBO Go. Google's betting that developers will show up and build support in later (they're opening up an SDK, supposedly), which is a very Google thing to do — ship the hardware, backfill the software. It also comes bundled with three months of Netflix for new subscribers, which is a nice touch except it does nothing for me since Ive been paying for Netflix since approximately forever and there's no way to redeem it if you already have an account. Small complaint, I know, but it's exactly the kind of thing that makes you feel like the promo wasnt actually designed with existing customers in mind.

I keep going back and forth on whether $35 is actually a good price or just a psychologically good price. Compare it to an Apple TV at $99 or a Roku box in the $50-100 range and sure, it looks like a steal. But Chromecast doesn't have its own remote, doesn't have its own interface really, you're driving the whole thing from your phone or your laptop. Its less "streaming box" and more "wireless HDMI cable for stuff you were already going to watch on your phone anyway." Which, fine, that's a legitimate product category, but its worth being honest about what youre actually buying instead of getting swept up in the sold-out-in-a-day hype.

Anyway. If mine ever ships Ill do a real writeup on how it actually performs, because right now every review Ive read is from someone who got a review unit handed to them directly by Google's PR team, and those always read a little rosier than reality tends to be. I want to know what happens when three people in the house are all trying to cast something over a mediocre home router at the same time, because thats the actual test, not some controlled demo in a conference room in Mountain View.

One more thing worth mentioning while Im at it: Nokia's Lumia 1020, the one with the ridiculous 41-megapixel camera sensor, went on sale this week too, and it got almost none of the attention Chromecast did. Which feels backwards to me, a phone camera that can genuinely replace a point-and-shoot seems like a bigger deal long-term than another streaming stick, but I guess dongles that sell out are more exciting to write headlines about than incremental camera hardware. Different post, maybe.