Google Cast Protocol: Overview
Since the availability of the Chromecast in 2013, and the public release
of its SDK in 2014, only few information was published about the
protocol used by this device: Google Cast. This article is the first of a
series that will explain the technical aspects of this protocol. So let's dive
into the wonderful and dark world of Google Cast.
As we will see during all these articles, google-cast is both a very well
designed product from the technical side and a completely locked
technology. Google wants to keep this technology as closed as possible
so that only receivers blessed by Google can be implemented. This is
probably because they consider google-cast as one of the most
promising ways to get control of the TV screen. All the security features
used in google-cast are probably one of the reasons why there are so
few information available about it on the internet. One should consider
these articles as an attempt to document google-cast.
Chromecast And Google Cast
Before going into the details, let’s start with a reminder on what is
Google Cast and some terminology. The Chromecast is a device that is
used to run an application that is cast from another device. The
Chromecast is a receiver device. As of today there are few receiver
devices available: The Chromecast 1, the Chromecast 2, the
Chromecast audio, the AndroidTv certified devices, and a couple of
Google Cast Audio speakers. The device that is used to cast the content
is a sender device. Sender devices can be any Android or iOS device, or
a PC running Chrome.