So I tried to buy a Chromecast tonight and once again, no dice. Every retailer's got the same little "temporarily out of stock" note now, Google Play included, and it's been over a week since the thing even came out. I'm pretty sure at this point I'd have better luck finding one in a Best Buy parking lot from a guy selling it out of his trunk than actually clicking "add to cart" successfully.
For anyone who missed it, Google put this out on July 24th alongside the new Nexus 7. Its a tiny dongle, plugs into the HDMI port on your TV, connects to your wifi, and lets you beam stuff from your phone or laptop to the screen instead of dealing with cables. Thirty five bucks. That's the whole pitch and honestly its a good one — my cable box already looks like a plate of spaghetti back there and I don't need another box, I just want the $35 stick.
The thing that actually sold it out, though, wasn't just the price. It was the three months of free Netflix they bundled with it for a while, which if you do the math is worth about $24 on its own, so youre basically paying eleven bucks for the hardware. People did that math real fast. My buddy Dan ordered his within like twenty minutes of the announcement and got his in the mail four days later, smug as anything. I waited a day because I was at work and missed the window, and now the estimated ship date on everything I can find says "3 to 4 weeks." Four weeks! For a $35 dongle!
And of course now theres a small army of people on eBay reselling them for $65, $70, one listing I saw this afternoon wanted $89 plus shipping. Which, no. I have a Roku already sitting under my TV that I paid fifty bucks for two Christmases ago and it does basically the same job, so Im not about to pay double retail out of impatience for a device thats supposed to be the cheap option. That's the whole point of the thing. Paying a scalper for it defeats the purpose.
I will say the interaction model is a little different from Roku and from what Ive read that's part of the appeal. Theres no remote, no on screen menu you navigate with arrow keys. You just hit a cast button inside an app on your phone or in Chrome on your laptop and it throws the video to the TV while your phone stays free to do other things, check email, whatever. Whether that turns out to be more convenient in daily use than a $6 remote I honestly don't know yet, because I don't have the thing.
The new Nexus 7 that came out alongside it started shipping this week too, on the 30th, and from what people are saying the screen bump is real — 1920x1200 instead of the older 1280x800 on the original one from last year. I've had the 2012 Nexus 7 since around when it launched and it's been a solid little tablet for reading in bed, but the text on small type sites has always looked a bit soft to me compared to my phone. Kind of curious whether the new panel actually fixes that or if Im just imagining a problem that isnt there because everyone online is hyping the resolution numbers.
Anyway. No Chromecast in this house yet. I'll update whenever it actually shows up, assuming it shows up before the free Netflix promo runs out, which given the current ship estimates is not a guarantee. Would not be shocked if I end up caving and paying too much for one out of pure impatience, because thats sort of my pattern with these things if Im honest with myself.