When the Chromecast was first announced, Google said that its new streaming device would only work with certain services, like YouTube Now with a new update that’s making the rounds, Chromecast users may soon find themselves able to beam content from more places.
Gigaom is reporting that some Chromecast owners on Google+ are noticing that their devices is now allowing them to stream YouTube videos embedded on third-party Web sites. You could already do this through Chromecast’s ability to display a Chrome Web page on a television, but you would have to watch the video on the Web page itself. It’s not exactly an elegant solution.
With this latest test, Chromecast owners will now get the native YouTube experience no matter where they are. It’s a big improvement over the previous implementation that would have required the user to open YouTube in their browser and search for the embedded video in question before being able to stream it on their television.
It should be noted that this is merely a test at this point in time. A YouTube spokesperson told Gigaom that this current test is just one of many Google regularly conducts to see what consumers react positively to. It may consider rolling out the feature to more users based upon the feedback it receives during this test.
Beyond this minor change, there’s not much else happening on the Chromecast front. After killing off an unofficial app that let users stream local content via Chromecast, users have been requesting Google officially add the feature. Unfortunately, there’s been no transparent progress made on that front so we’ll just have to wait a bit longer to see if Google implements the one feature that most users obviously want.
[Image: Google]