CheapCast is an app designed to pretty much turn any Android device into a Google Chromecast. Up until now, that’s meant you could fire up Netflix, YouTube, or other supported apps on your phone or tablet, tap a button and then send it to the device running CheapCast.

But there’s one thing you’ve been able to do with Google’s $35 Chromecast device that wasn’t supported with CheapCast… until now. That’s “tab casting,” or mirroring the contents of a Google Chrome web browser tab.

Now the developer of CheapCast has updated the free Android app with support for tab casting, among other things.

cheapcast

When you stream video from Netflix, YouTube, Google Play Movies or other sites to CheapCast (or Chromecast), you’re kind of using your phone or tablet as a remote control — but audio or video actually streams straight from the internet, not from the device you’re using as a controller.

But tab casting works over your local network and lets you stream nearly anything in a browser tab as long as you’ve installed the Google Cast extension for Chrome. For instance you could stream video from Amazon or other services that wouldn’t normally work. Or you can stream presentations from Google Docs, or pretty much anything else that you can access in a web browser.

The updated app is also now powered by Google Chromium, the open source version of Chrome.

Cheapcast is available as a free download from the Google Play Store, but you can donate to the developer through an in-app purchase if you want to help support the app.

via Android Police

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7 replies on “CheapCast update lets you stream video from PC to Android”

  1. sorry, it does not work on galaxy S5 🙁

    cheapcast start working fine on the phone. I installed a fresh update of google cast extension on pc with windows7 ultimate x64 + chrome 64bits.
    But google does not find a chromecast-aware device (aka S5 with cheapcast)

  2. The basic functionality of Chromecast is to play online contents on TV SET. But Cheapcast enables the online video contents to be played on an android device. They are totally different. Frankly speaking, I don’t know why I need a smartphone to be used as a remote for another tablet to play the video. Can I just do everything on that tablet instead?

  3. Worked like a charm with Cheapcast on a Archos80g9 and a Huawei ascend P6 as the youtube “remote”.

    It was almost creepy how easy it was.

  4. this article’s headline stating following :”CheapCast update lets you stream video from PC to Android”, but there is nothing in the article indicated that you could do that. Only android devices were mentioned there.
    Even video on the Google play store for that app shows android phone to android tablet.
    So how exactly do you stream video from PC or laptop running Windows to Android?

  5. Some developer comes up with a free app that essentially turns an old phone or tablet into a direct replacement for one of Google’s hottest selling pieces of hardware and Google puts that app into their own app store. This, for me, perfectly sums up why I choose Android over iOS. Thanks Google for letting me do whatever I want, even when it’s not in your best interest.

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