Chrome Dev is testing video casting improvements to Chromecast

Casting video to Chromecast-supported device using the Chrome app should be easy, right? Unfortunately, sometimes casting video from a website yields poor video quality, along with the fact that it can cause your device’s battery to drain much faster. Thankfully, Google understands this frustration is doing something about it.

The latest Chrome Dev channel version of the browser will allow for Chrome to take the video content bitstream directly from the the web page and cast it to Chromecast when a clip is in full screen mode. This should allow for better video performance as well as offering longer battery life. The announcement was made by Google’s Chrome evangelist François Beaufort. He stated that if you have the Chrome Dev channel version installed, you can go to “chrome://flags/#media-remoting” and then enable the highlighted flag. Then you can restart Chrome to try it out if you have a Chromecast-supported device.

He suggests going to a video posted on the Vimeo site, and then click on the “Cast” option in Chrome to see if it will work.

This should – in theory – allow folks to watch large full screen web-based videos on Chrome that have not previously had Chromecast support, such as Amazon Prime’s video content. Keep in mind this support is still being tested so your mileage may vary. It’s likely that this new feature will make its way to a future stable channel version of Chrome in the near future.