Chromecast and some of its alternatives have been covered previously on PC Perspective, not just their capabilities but also ways to gain more control over your content stream. The market is quite saturated making it hard for a new user to pick which peice of hardware to pick up though thankfully many are inexpensive and you can actually afford to try more than one. The news from Hack a Day this morning makes Chromecast a little more attractive, especially for those with a technical inclination and a love of rooting devices. With a Teensy 2 or 2++ dev board, a USB OTG cable, a USB flash drive and just a few minutes you will be able to modify your DNS settings so you can watch geographically locked programming as well as load custom apps which might protect your ears from a certain type of torture.
"Now the Chromecast has been rooted, allowing anyone to change the DNS settings (Netflix and Hulu users that want to watch content not available in their country rejoice), and loading custom apps for the Chromecast."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Intel, CHT ink IoT cooperation pact @ DigiTimes
- Stiffed by Synolocker ransomware crims? Try F-Secure's python tool @ The Register
- Red Hat: ARM servers will come when people crank out chips like AMD's 64-bit Seattle @ The Register
I just ordered one of these
I just ordered one of these the other day. In the UK Amazon, Tesco and Currys recently slashed the prices from £30(GBP) to £18 (Tesco even giving £5 voucher for their streaming service).
It’s unfortunate you also need the Teensy dev board, I probably would have given the rooting process a try.
I read that previously rooting was tricky due to device auto-updating itself. I wonder if this one is able to block official updates, maybe in favour of custom firmwares, and if the latest exploit will be easily patched.