Classic Rant #1,129 (January 23, 2014): Google Chromecast

My family has four TVs in our house.

One is in the living room, and is hooked up to Dish Network.

Two of our other TVs are in the bedrooms--one in my son's room, one in my and my wife's room. We are hooked up to Verizon.

We have another TV that is right now dedicated to video games which is in my daughter's old room.

We can watch just about anything we want to watch, and as you know, even with all of these channels and things to do, there often isn't anything to watch.

So when I heard about Google Chromecast, I became very interested.

This little device, which plugs into the back of your HDTV, allows you to watch several different computer services on your TV, including YouTube and NetFlix.

You just plug it into the HD1 portal on the back of the TV, put in a couple of codes, and there you go.

You use your device--whether it be your phone or you tablet--as a remote, put on, let's say, YouTube, pick a video, and watch it right on your TV.

I became very interested in this dongle because of its cheap price and the fact that the upcoming WWE Network will be part of this service when it debuts.

I figured that for the pay-per-views alone, a service like this would be magical, because all I have to do is program my unit for it, and it would be on the TV screen. I could then record it and keep it for posterity.

But wait--there is one catch, at least for me, for this pretty nifty device.

You cannot record programming from it, and nobody seemingly wants to talk about it.

I have posted this in Chromecast forums, have done the same thing on Facebook sites dedicated to this device, and I have yet to get an answer to my question: "Can you record content off of Chromecast?"

I don't think you can, but in this enterprising world, I would have thought that someone would have figured this out.

Guess not.

I do not have any DVRs. I use the standard, old fashioned, video recorders to record content off my TVs. I do have video recorders that record to DVD or tape, so I can go both ways with that.

But you cannot record content provided by Chromecast, and I have to say that I am disappointed.

There probably is a way to hook up my computer directly with my TV, and that is probably the way to record content off of the Internet. But I thought that this would be the easy solution, but it has not worked out that way.

Otherwise, Google Chromecast works just fine.

I have watched a lot of YouTube stuff using it, and I plan on watching some movies off NetFlix when I get a chance.

But I repeat, I am disappointed.

I should have figured, since this is a Google device. They own YouTube, and are very protective of it, wiping out any copying service that dares to give you the ability to record its videos for your own use.

I guess it was a pipe dream I had, but honestly, I would recommend Google Chromecast anyway.

It is a real nifty device, even without the recording capability.

I like it, and I like it a lot, but I don't love it as I thought I would.

Back to the drawing board ...