I believe you’ve all heard of Google Chromecast by now, a digital media player Google released back in 2013. This small dongle was very cheap at launch, and it still is, but it’s very useful. This is essentially a media streaming powerhouse despite its size, and as long as your TV has HDMI port, you’re good to go. At this point you can stream more or less what you want to a third-party device through your computer, smartphone or tablet. That being said, Google has also unveiled the Nexus Player a year ago, which is also a Google Cast receiver, but it has a somewhat different purpose than this small dongle has. We were wondering when will Google release the second-gen Google Chromecast, and it seems like that might happen soon.
According to a report from 9to5Google, Chromecast 2 is right around the corner. If you take a look at the images in the gallery down below, you’ll get to see the alleged Google Chromecast 2, which looks quite odd. This device looks like a balloon or something like that, and it’s showcased in Red, Black and Yellow colors in these images. The design is kind of unfortunate, or at least seems like it in these images, but this thing will reportedly offer some significant improvements over the original Chromecast. The new Chromecast will allegedly feature an improved Wi-Fi capability (802.11ac), along with a number of interesting software inclusions. One of those improvements will be the ability to include custom content feeds, but we still don’t know the details. The ‘Fast Play’ option will also be included here, which is supposed to speed up the whole streaming process (mainly the start of it). Another thing mention in the report is ‘Chromecast Audio’, which is supposed to let you plug this device into more or less any speaker via an AUX cable in order to listen to music.
Now, it seems like Google intends to launch this dongle during their September 29th event along with new Nexus device, which are great news, of course. The Chromecast 2 is expected to be available in 10 countries at first, and will rollout to additional ones later on. That’s more or less it, keep in mind that this isn’t confirmed info at this point, so take all of this with a grain of salt and stay tuned for additional news.
