Google’s new Chromecast with Google TV (HD) looks virtually identical to the 4K model the company launched a few years ago. But it’s a more affordable device with a $30 price tag, a less powerful processor, and less RAM.

It does have a few advantages over the $50 Chromecast with Google TV (4K) though.

We already knew that the new Chromecast HD supports hardware-accelerated playback for videos encoded using the AV1 codec, something that the 4K model does not support.

And we also knew that it supports A/B partitions, allowing firmware updates to be downloaded and installed in the background regardless of how many apps you have installed (sometimes the 4K model fails to install updates because it’s out of space.

But when Elias from AFTVNews got his hands on the new Chromecast HD, he discovered something surprising: it’s easy to unlock the bootloader. There’s an option in the device Settings to “Allow OEM unlocking.”

AFTVNews

Theoretically that’s the first step toward unlocking the bootloader, but unfortunately Mishaal Rahman notes that the next step, which involves actually getting access to the bootloader to unlock it, isn’t as simple. At this point it’s not even clear if it’s possible at all.

If anyone does figure out how to unlock the bootloader, that could make the Chromecast HD a much more hacker-friendly device than the 4K model, which does not officially support unlocking the bootloader (you need to use third-party tools that exploit a vulnerability to do that). An unlocked bootloader opens the possibility of gaining root access, installing custom ROMs, or making other changes to the default software that could affect performance or behavior.

That said, AFTVNews also ran some benchmarks and determined that while the new Chromecast HD should be fine for streaming HD video to a TV, there’s a good reason it costs $20 less than the 4K model that’s been on the market for the past two years: the 1080p model is significantly less powerful, although it does at least outperform Walmart’s $15 Onn Android TV media streamer.

GeekBench results via AFTVNews (click for morescores)

If you want the fastest Android-based media streamer available, your best bet is still to pick up an NVIDIA Shield TV or Shield TV Pro (best CPU & graphics) or Amazon Fire TV Cube (competitive with the Shield TV in CPU performance, but far behind in graphics). They’re also some of the most expensive Android-based media streamers though, so I’d probably recommend waiting until they go on sale if you choose to go that route – Amazon sells the Fire TV Cube for 40% or more off a few times a year (such as Prime Day or Black Friday).

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3 replies on “Chromecast with Google TV (HD) has an unlockable bootloader (Update: maybe not)”

  1. If anyone interested, eta prime on YouTube, has posted a hands on review of the HD Chromecast.

    1. Yeah I was hoping he would release a review soon. He confirmed that USB storage can be formatted and used as internal storage, which is good news.

      Too bad it doesn’t seem to handle N64 emulation very well. I would have drove straight to Best Buy to get one if he had better results with N64 emulation.

  2. I would pick up one of these if it had more storage. Based on a quick google search, it seems like it only has 8gb storage.

    I have a Hisense 4K smart TV with built in Google TV, but the hardware running it is extremely poor performance, and it only has 4gb storage. I actually can’t even run STBEMU with 4gb of storage, because the buffer file exceeds 2-3gb.

    8gb is still too low. Most streaming apps store enough local content that you’re going to fill 8gb easily.

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