YouTube quietly started to add support for Chromecast to its embedded web player, allowing users of Google’s TV dongle to beam videos displayed on third-party websites straight from their browser to their TV. Previously, casting was only supported from YouTube.com.
Some Chromecast users started reporting in recent days that they had seen the dongle’s play to TV button popping up on embedded videos on Google+ as well as other sites. Testing this, I was able to cast videos from a few third-party sites, including GigaOM.com. However, the button seems to show up randomly, and may not be available for everyone, or for every video, as it is part of a test. Here’s what a YouTube spokesperson had to say:
“With more videos coming to YouTube every minute we’re always experimenting with ways to help people more easily find, watch and share the videos that matter most to them. As always, we’ll consider rolling changes out more broadly based on feedback on these experiments.”
Adding Chromecast support to videos embedded on third-party sites does make a lot of sense for YouTube, as it could get people to watch videos for longer periods of time, and in turn display more ads. YouTube already lets users beam any video from YouTube.com as well as from its mobile apps to a Chromecast device.
Check out our video review of Chromecast below:
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