On Monday, Google released an update for Chrome Beta on Android. As per usual, the search giant always tend to launch optional features for users to try out. This new feature will give Chrome beta users the ability to push any HTML5 based video content to Chromecast.
The new feature is not available for everyone to see, and rightfully so because it is far from ready for prime time. To activate the new feature, users are required to use the well known Chrome flags protocol. A few keystrokes should have the protocol up and running; still, we recommend performing this task if you're comfortable with doing advanced things in Chrome beta for Android.
According to Android Police, by typing in "chrome://flags/#enable-cast" in the address bar of Chrome beta and pressing go, users should see "Enable experimental Chromecast support." Hit the enable link then close the browser, everything should work after Chrome beta restarts.
Once enabled, users should be able to push HTML5 videos on the web to their Chromecast device, and then play it back on their TV. It's an easy task, but as of now, only videos on YouTube seem to work. Websites outside of YouTube appears to have an issue where the video fails to make it to the Chromecast device after being previously sent. We expect Google to fix this issue in future updates, before making it an official feature in a stale version of Chrome for Android.
Bear in mind that videos with the ability to be pushed to Chromecast will have the option to allow users to do so.
Chromecast streaming as a part of Chrome beta is a great move on Google's part, but we doubt users will find much use for it. At the moment, the majority of websites on the Internet still have a preference for Flash over HTML5, s until that changes, user will have to stick with selected websites to take advantage of Chromecast streaming.
The next big step for Google should be allowing for full tab casting. That is basically pushing all browser tabs to Chromecast for streaming on the TV.
