Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I thought Chromecast was going to be great. I bought Chromecast to upgrade the Android stick that I currently use. I thought that Chromecast would relegate my AppleTV to the never use anymore pile. Unfortunately, out of the box there were problems. I wasted a lot of time trying to get Chromecast to connect to my modern Linksys router. Chromecast does not have a USB slot to connect a wired ethernet adapter like my Android stick. I thought my problem had to do with WiFi reception. Instead, it turns out that Chromecast does not support long passwords! Google this for the gory details. I have not seen a basic problem like this in quite some time. My choice was to then change the password on my many devices or get another router to only work with Chromecast. So I pull an old Apple Airport Express out of the heap and setup another network with a nice short password that Chromecast will like. Unfortunately, I will have to switch my Google phone and Google tablet to this separate network every time I want to beam something to the Chromecast. Unfortunately, another problem arose. The Google Nexus 4 and Google Nexus 7 won't connect to this new network. Searching around, I find a Google Chromecast FAQ saying that they have a problem with Airport Express and to downgrade the firmware! Ok, I just want to get something to work so I pull out my laptop and install the Chromecast software. I then switch the laptop to the Chromecast-only wifi network and I finally see some YouTube video on the TV. Unfortunately, there is no sound! What a hassle at this point. Talk about an out-of-the box experience. Is Chromecast another Google "beta" headed for early retirement? So I call Google Support which is conveniently 24x7. Unfortunately, their technicians are not really well trained and have never heard of the password problem or sound issue. They aren't allowed to Google the web to even understand the issues. They don't have 2nd level support to escalate the problem to senior people. Until these basic issues are fixed the Chromecast is just a pretty screensaver on one of my HDMI inputs. AppleTV remains the workhorse and the Android stick that I bought on Amazon is 2nd choice.