Went back through Google's design writeup on the TV Streamer, the one where Ivy Ross and Isabelle Olsson walk through the decisions, and one line explains the whole shape of the thing. Olsson says they were bringing it out from behind the television set, so it needed to be something people are happy to have on their credenza.
That's a bigger change than it sounds. The Chromecast's entire design brief was to disappear behind the panel, dangling off an HDMI port in a dead-air pocket with a TV radiating heat onto it. Anyone who ran a Chromecast with Google TV for a couple of years knows how that ended: thermal throttling, apps taking forever to open, and a device that got noticeably worse in summer. Google's own writeup lists heat dissipation alongside the aesthetic reasons for the new shape, and the slight slant that makes it look thinner and lighter is doing double duty as an air gap.
So the honest version of the pitch isn't that the Streamer is prettier. It's that Google gave up on hiding it because hiding it was cooking it. Same reason the remote got longer and the volume control moved, though that one's just ergonomics.
Worth saying the specs backed it up too, with a faster processor, double the memory and 32GB of storage versus the old Chromecast. But I'd argue the ventilation is why it feels quick a year in rather than the silicon. Has anyone here stuffed theirs into a closed AV cabinet anyway? Curious whether the throttling came straight back.
That's a bigger change than it sounds. The Chromecast's entire design brief was to disappear behind the panel, dangling off an HDMI port in a dead-air pocket with a TV radiating heat onto it. Anyone who ran a Chromecast with Google TV for a couple of years knows how that ended: thermal throttling, apps taking forever to open, and a device that got noticeably worse in summer. Google's own writeup lists heat dissipation alongside the aesthetic reasons for the new shape, and the slight slant that makes it look thinner and lighter is doing double duty as an air gap.
So the honest version of the pitch isn't that the Streamer is prettier. It's that Google gave up on hiding it because hiding it was cooking it. Same reason the remote got longer and the volume control moved, though that one's just ergonomics.
Worth saying the specs backed it up too, with a faster processor, double the memory and 32GB of storage versus the old Chromecast. But I'd argue the ventilation is why it feels quick a year in rather than the silicon. Has anyone here stuffed theirs into a closed AV cabinet anyway? Curious whether the throttling came straight back.
