Google’s Fiber TV services are still considered a sparse commodity for those looking to get their hands on lightning-fast Gigabit internet at a reasonable price, having only rolled out in a small number of cities across the U.S. The good news is that Google has plenty of other cities on their list of potential rollouts, pending they get approval from the city and meet other requirements. While the rest of the U.S. is busy being hopeful about Fiber TV coming to their town, Google is bringing a new feature to the places that have Fiber TV already, and they plan to start rolling it out over “the coming weeks” according to today’s Google Fiber Blog post.
The new feature in question is Google Cast support. This is the same Google Cast technology that’s built into the Chromecast HDMI dongle and a myriad of smart TVs, as well as speakers and other devices. With Fiber TV services having Google Cast support in the near future, those who subscribe to it will be able to cast apps from their smartphones and tablets to the TV without having the tech baked into their TV itself or having to plug in a Chromecast device. To make this work, Google will begin sending out updates to the Fiber TV boxes that reside in people’s homes, allowing the function to work.
Just like with the Chromecast or any other device that has Google Cast technology built in, users will connect their compatible smart mobile devices to the Fiber WiFi connection in their home, and the cast button will show up in the top right corner of apps that support the technology when the TV is turned on. It’s as simple as that. Google states that the feature will roll out to all Fiber TV subscribers, so it sounds like it won’t matter which package of the service you have. Fiber TV is just the latest technology to receive Google Cast support, as both Philips and Polaroid had recently announced a line of 4K TVs that have Google Cast integrated, and Bang and Olufsen recently added Google Cast to a couple of their BeoPlay speakers. If you have Fiber TV and aren’t sure which apps support the cast button, downloading the Google Cast app will show you a list of apps that are compatible.