There’s no doubt the landscape of how we consume our media has been shifting for years now, and with the arrival of devices like Google’s Chromecast the ways we sit down to engulf hours of our favorite TV shows and movies has gotten even easier. We can stream stuff from our devices or from our desktops with the Google Cast extension for Chrome. Sony is giving Smartband Talk users an even easier way to control their media though: Through a new app launched on the Play Store called Chromecast for Smartband Talk. If you own a Smartband Talk and a Chromecast but don’t always care to reach for your phone to pause that show at just the right moment, this app could be of some use to you.
This particular extension for the Smartband Talk will obviously only benefit Smartband Talk owners, and that’s the key here. Sony is making it possible for you to do things with their activity tracker that other trackers won’t have the ability to do, thus creating a small niche that could entice customers. Of course those customers would also have to likely be heavily invested in using the Chromecast. Whatever the case it’s a cool idea that hopefully comes to other trackers.
The extension itself won’t be fully featured and you won’t be able to cruise through your recent watchlist from your wrist, but you will be able to pause playback and restart playback once you have started streaming a show. If you’ve ever gotten up off the couch to grab something and forgot to grab your phone and hit the pause button for whatever you’re watching, this is a feature that would be beneficial so long as you’re wearing your Smartband Talk. In addition to allowing users to pause and resume playback, it also shows the progress of any buffering media once a piece of media has been selected, and it also shows you the progress of the playback on the screen of the Smartband Talk during playback so you know how much is left of whatever it is you have on the big screen.