Google says it's rolling out fix for stricken Chromecasts Google has told The Register it's beginning to roll out a fix for Chromecast devices that were crippled by an expired security certificate authority. We're assured this deployment will take place over the next few days. On Sunday, March 9, users of the Chocolate Factory's second-generation Chromecast and Chromecast Audio …
" I'm surprised they were able to build a new image for a 10-year-old device in just over two days"
Mine has received several updates over the years and gotten new features including better support for the TV remote which never use to work properly.... So easier to rebuild and distribute than you think perhaps.....
10 years is actually pretty impressive for tech gear imho.
Not really. At least not in this case. Where you're talking ever-changing requirements and continually updated software wanting more resources - then you'd expect old hardware to run out of steam and need upgrading. When you're talking about a bit of solid-state kit to do just one job, then it ought not to need much more than security updates.
Admittedly Google do throw more features at these things, which I'd find if they didn't - but it would be rude to complain. But that's not what you've paid for. You've paid for a bit of hardware to do one job, and it should be able to keep doing that until it breaks, or the standards of uses change.
The only reason my 1st gen Chromecast died, was because Google chose to kill it. It was working fine, and had a working Chromecast app. But they wanted to push everything into the Google Home app, and it lasted a year in that before they deliberately turned it off. And given it was registered with them, they didn't even bother with the courtesy of sending an email to say it was happening, or putting up an error message in the app to say they'd deliberately killed it. Think that was only 5 years old at the time. It was cheap, and relied on other software, so I can't complain, I got my use out of it (and knew the risks when I bought it). But equally Google could have kept supporting it for very litle effort, if they'd wanted to. They're not a poor company - and bricking perfectly good hardware is a reason to not trust them to sell hardware in future.
This is weird, as my 1st gen CCast is running fine as we speak.
it stopped working many moons ago, so my memory is not exact. I'd only bought it as a quick and dirty way to show American football on the telly, as my brother was staying - and replaced it after it died with a Roku during the pandemic, as that can play Amazon stuff.
At some point they replaced the Chromecast app with the Home app. But it only lasted about 6 months under the Home app before that refused to see it, and when I googled for an answer the info I found as that Google had stopped supporting it. So I gave up, as it wasn't something I regularly used. When the pandemic hit and I was watching more telly I invested a bit of effort and got the Roku, but by that point it didn't occur to me to have another try at getting the Chromecast to work. When it worked it was great, when it didn't you got no error messages and often had to wait a long time to update it (or the phone app) reset everything and/or scan for it again - so I didn't bother.
@ I ain't Sparticus:
and it should be able to keep doing that until it breaks, or the standards of uses change.
I've learned from experience the all-too-frequently limited useful lifespans of such devices, vs a general-purpose computer.
Many companies reduce production costs in these things by using a dedicated audio and/or video decoder chip, and an anemic CPU with a tiny amount of flash and RAM.
That works for well enough for the end-user, until formats change, are extended, or additional ones appear.
My dedicated audio/video box worked fine ... but Patriot provided ZERO updates for it (and ran a Telnet server, and the root password was not set to anything).
No support for .ogg audio files. No support for H.264. No support for H.265. No support for .mkv files.
Updating VLC and MPlayer on my single-core, two-thread netbook gave me acceptable results (though not with 1080p videos).
Given how frequeny Google drop side-line services and products without any consideration whatsoever for the users, I suspect this is not being fixed out of the goodness of their hearts, but because it runs afoul of deliberate obsolescence laws. The device may be out of warranty, but it's still illegal to have a kill-switch deliberately break your device after a certain period, which is exactly what this amounts to.
Not really, the device in in Google's "vintage supported" list at google's own volition.
They are fixing it because they promised to fix it as long as it is in that list.
Expect it to drop of that list a few weeks/months after this is fixed.
PSA: The chromecast 1st gen was dropped out of the supported list a few months ago.
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It is all very well saying that Google told users not to return to factory settings. The problem is that they did not tell users in time.
I hit the factory reset button within an hour of the problem appearing as that is what all the advice on the web tells you to do if other remedies do not work. There must be many thousands of users who have returned to factory settings as that is a standard procedure when Chromecast and other IT gadgets do not work and need to be fixed.
Mine on the fritz right now, but luckily I was too slow to figure out reset procedures, iOS was exceptionally slow to download Google Home and meanwhile I googled the error message and found out it was a known bug for everyone.
I know it is very much passé and gauche to say anything good about anything Google, but this has been a good little device. Running 5-6 years now, bought it for $50CAD, much less flakey than my TVs hub or whatever it's called. You would hardly think it was from Google, from its unobtrusiveness.
On the other hand, whenever I have to deal with it, it always it seems I need to download all 500Mb of Google Home and that is one heck of piece of bloatware to set a wifi password with. Then of, course, I delete that PoS ASAP.
Hoping it comes back to life.
My experience with “operations” is that certificates would just expire randomly. When one attempts to renew them, it turns out they were created by some former employee, using a personal credit card and a Gmail / Hotmail account (which now has expired).
In addition to all this, they are never stored in a sane location.
And there are never any management software to check for expiration or anything.
The good part is that they usually expire when it’s “time x 2.50” rate.
If the original software load was built with a certificate not set to expire in 2025, that probably sounded like "forever" to Google employees in 2015 who didn't figure Google would keep supporting them that long. They supported their Android phones for something like two years at that point.
I am surprised such old products are still on their supported list, considering that even with multiple extensions they don't support Pixel phones that long. I have to think they meant to take it off their supported list long ago but accidentally missed that somehow, and are now paying the price by having to push out one last fix before they mark them unsupported.
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