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At $35, the Chromecast is the most impressive thing Google has done in years. What is it? It’s a tiny WiFi enabled computer that you plug into the back of your television, and all it basically does is play videos from a remote server. Now if you’re a normal person, chances are there are some videos that you keep locally. Earlier this week, we saw an intrepid young hacker figure out how to stream content from his Android phone to his Chromecast simply by turning his Android phone into a server. Today, he’s back with another demo.
Dropbox, which I personally don’t use, but I know millions of people do and love, is essentially a hard drive in the sky. Koushik Dutta, the hacker who enabled playback of local media, has figured out how to make his Chromecast play back media stored in his Dropbox account. It makes perfect sense when you think about it, because again, all the Chromecast does is play back files off a server, whether that server is on your phone, on your computer, or in a data center.
How can you do all this with your Chromecast today? Sadly, under Google’s terms of service, Dutta isn’t allowed to distribute his code, but I can only imagine that Dropbox watched this guy’s work and is already banging away with the Chromecast SDK to add this functionality to their app.
