- If you watched my review of the new Google Chromecast,
then you know that I love it.
And part of that is because it comes with Google TV,
its own interface, finally.
And that means it has a lot of apps, lots and lots of apps.
And today I'm going to talk about the top 10 free apps
that you need to have on this device.
So if you're a streaming junkie,
you've been at this for years,
most of these apps are probably gonna be familiar to you.
But if you are new to streaming,
yeah, you're in for a treat.
There's a lot of stuff out there.
And frankly, if you want to,
you can just get these apps that I'm gonna give you today
and never pay for anything ever again
and you'll still be thoroughly entertained.
There'll be more content
than you could ever possibly consume,
all for free.
So let's dive in.
(upbeat electronic music)
Now the first thing to note as we get started
is that like I hinted at before,
these apps that I'm gonna go over today,
these are not out of left field,
they're not hidden gems, nothing like that.
These are very popular free streaming apps.
Now at a later time, I will do a top 10
kind of hidden gems apps that you can find on this platform,
so make sure you're subscribed for that.
I'm also going to go over some of the tips and tricks
to make this device work really well for you.
So again, subscribe and you'll get more content like this.
But for now, let's get into these top 10 free apps.
The first one I wanna talk about is Tubi.
If you've never heard of Tubi,
it's basically free Netflix but with commercials
and somewhat lesser known titles, right?
So if we pop into Tubi,
it's gonna pull up a library that looks very similar to,
like I said, to Netflix.
It's got the different categories,
you scroll through the categories
vertically and then horizontally,
you can look at the individual titles within those.
Now you don't have to log into Tubi,
but if you do,
you can save my list
and you can have that continue watching feature
that you're used to on other streaming platforms.
Basically this is like any other streaming service.
They wanna track your data usage.
They want to see what it is that you're watching
for many various reasons,
some desirable, some not.
So you can make the choice
whether you want to get the benefits from registering.
Well, that's Tubi.
And similarly, you can go to our next choice,
which is Sony Crackle.
Crackle, again, gives you the choice to log in or not.
You can skip that login process.
And again, it's gonna be a very familiar kind of thing
where you can sort by TV shows and movies
and you're going to scroll vertically
to get different categories,
horizontally to get specific titles.
And in both cases,
you are going to find good stuff to watch.
It's not like every title here is no named stuff
that nobody cares about.
There is going to be stuff that will be interesting
and fun for you to watch.
The only catch here is that it's commercial supported.
Whether that's a big deal to you,
obviously that's gonna be up to you.
And so if you absolutely hate commercials,
you're probably gonna wanna pay for your services.
But if you don't mind them that much,
yeah, there's a lot of good free stuff out there.
So those two services, like I mentioned, Tubi and Crackle,
they're kind of like Netflix,
they're structured like Netflix,
they feel and smell like Netflix,
they just have commercials on them.
Similarly, if we go to Pluto TV,
this is going to seem very familiar
because it feels like a cable or satellite platform.
It's got a bunch of free live channels to watch.
But basically what you're getting here
is kind of the B team channels.
These are not the things that you're used to
on cable or satellite,
but they might be familiar.
Maybe they're spinoff channels,
or like here, there's a channel devoted entirely
to Beverly Hills 90210
and similar titles like that.
So you get these little offshoot channels.
And again, you can find a ton of stuff to watch.
Again, commercial supported.
And in this case, because it feels,
it's meant to feel like a cable or satellite service,
this is all live, it's scheduled,
and so you would need to go in and, you know,
schedule you're watching if you wanted to do that.
But Pluto does do a good job of sorting their categories.
They've got a ton of channels, if I'm being honest,
a ton of channels.
So you go over here on the left
and you can sort by whatever you're in the mood for
and it's gonna jump you to those channels
in the list here.
And now let's talk about Xumo.
Okay, Xumo is kind of a combination
of what we've talked about so far.
So imagine Tubi and Crackle and Pluto all had a baby,
you would have something like Xumo.
Because it has the on demand stuff
that you would get from a Tubi or a Crackle
but it also has the live channel lineup
or a similar live channel lineup
that you would get with Pluto.
And so, again, over here on the left,
I'm going to sort by what I want.
Do I wanna watch something that's live right now?
Do I wanna watch some free movies or on demand content?
You can sort there and find something for you to watch.
In fact, yeah, again, pretty good content here.
It's not going to be the top shelf, you know,
A-list stuff that you might find on the premium services
like HBO Max or Netflix or Disney Plus or whatever.
But that doesn't mean that it's not good stuff
and that there aren't titles here worth looking for.
And now we come to,
as far as the free entertainment options,
in one way it's the granddaddy of them all, Plex.
Now I'm not necessarily talking about
the titles that they have available or anything like that.
What I mean is kind of similarly to Xumo
where Xumo felt like it was a combination
of those other ones,
Plex is a combination of all of those, including Xumo,
plus a little bit more.
So you've got 80 plus live channels that you can go through
on that live TV, a menu option.
They've got 20,000 on-demand titles that you can go through
on their movies and shows.
Or Plex also lets you upload your own media onto a server.
So you're gonna use your server at home,
say on your personal PC,
and then you can upload your music,
your movies, your photos, whatever you want,
and then enjoy those anywhere you would like on the go
as long as you can access Plex.
So it has a your media folder here
where you can go and add your media here.
So if you have a DVD library
that you've ripped onto a hard drive
and you wanna be able to access that
like it's a streaming title,
then Plex,
and there are other services out there like this,
but Plex is a great one, a great basic starter
to get you access to your own library.
Okay, so let's move on to another category,
let's talk about news.
If you are cutting the cord for the first time
and you're looking for good news sources,
there are a ton of great streaming news sources.
One of my favorites is Haystack News.
So if we pop into Haystack News,
it's gonna ask you where you're located,
it wants your location information.
It's also gonna ask you what you're interested in,
current events, business and finance,
science and technology.
And it's going to hold together
news from all sorts of sources
and get you access to that in a single feed.
And then you can also go through
and search on-demand news titles.
And so you can look for local stuff,
you can look for international,
whatever the category is that you wanna look at,
you're gonna have access to that here
and you'll even get your local news feeds
or at least the ones that agree to go with Haystack.
There are other services out there like haystack.
And so different channels,
you know, different affiliates might sign a contract
with other services,
but Haystack so far has been my favorite of this category.
Next up is PBS.
I mean, what do you want me to say?
It's PBS, you should get it.
You go to PBS online, you log in.
Again, you'll give them your location information
because it's a public broadcasting,
which means that it is tied
to your tax dollars at your location.
So you sign in, it's gonna give you your local PBS affiliate
and, you know,
obviously some more general PBS content as well.
So definitely get that.
You're gonna get all the PBS content you're used to.
And then also there is a separate app for PBS Kids.
So if you do have kids in the house
and you wanna make sure they have access
to Daniel Tiger and Curious George
and whatever else they watch on PBS Kids,
then yes, get a separate app for that.
All right, coming up on our last couple.
I believe this one comes pre-installed if I remember right
but I could be wrong.
I've had it now for several weeks
and I'm struggling to remember if I downloaded this
or if it came, but that's Spotify.
And there are other, again, other services out there.
So obviously you can put Google Music in there.
You can use YouTube for music, Tidal,
whatever the case may be.
But Spotify is the one that I use.
Find yourself a music service
and make sure you've got that downloaded
on your new Chromecast.
Especially if you we've got decent speakers
attached to your TV,
then a music service is great.
Especially if you're hosting a party
or you're, well, okay, maybe not during COVID, right?
But if you're hosting a party
or you're doing chores around the house
and you wanna have music on,
your TV is actually a great place to make that happen.
So make sure you get one of those services
on your top 10 list.
And lastly, it's an app for all of the second
and third children out there.
The people who had older siblings when you were kids
and you could never actually play video games
but you watched people play a lot of video games,
Twitch is for you.
Twitch is actually fantastic.
There is more than just video game content on there,
but that's the kind of bread and butter.
So when you watch Twitch,
you can watch other people playing video games,
commenting on video games.
You can watch professional tournaments,
whatever the case may be.
So if you're a gamer,
you've probably already heard of Twitch.
And it's been disappointing to me
for the last couple of years
that it disappeared off of Roku's lineup.
But here it is again
on the new Google Chromecast or Google TV,
I guess is the platform that we should call it.
Here it is in all its glory.
Make sure you've got Twitch,
it's fantastic.
So there you have it, that's my top 10 list.
Obviously there are a lot of other great options out there
but I had to whittle it down to 10
because, you know, for the title, right?
So what did I miss?
What are the other absolute must haves for this platform?
I would love to hear about it in the comments below.
Or what other apps should I be including in my next video
when I do the hidden gems?
If there's anything that you've found
that you really like on this platform,
let me know in the comments.
Like and subscribe.
Thank you so much for watching, everybody.
I'll see you next time.