When we were coming back home from our five-day road trip, yesterday, I stopped by the Best Buy in Bellingham, WA. I knew that getting one's hands on a Chromecast dongle is rather is hard as they're as rare as hen's teeth. There were none available online, but as long as I was so near a US store I thought I might check. Surprisingly, five of the devices were in in stock and I bought one.
I didn't try plugging it into my living-room widescreen until this morning. How cool! I can cast Netflix and YouTube directly to the screen via a PC, phone, or tablet. It just plugs into a spare HDMI input on a widescreen TV. It becomes a device on one's wireless network, so although the selection process is made on the smaller device, the actual Internet connection is via the Chromecast hardware itself. This means high definition is clear.
So far only Google's own apps, YouTube and Netflix work on it. More streaming sites are promised. Three months of free credit on Netflix are given so the little device worked to be around $11. I've already gotten more enjoyment out of it than that!