I actually just bought a current gen Chromecast because I was looking for a "plug it in so I can watch YouTube on my TV" device similar to the Gen1 and was also dismayed at being forced to register/log in with a Google account and go through all of the hoops. I wish I had done more research and had I known that current Chromecasts are basically just a thin proxy of the exact same "Google TV OS" that ships on a lot of current smart TVs I would have paid the premium to buy a Nvidia Shield or something
I recently bought two TVs, one for my sister and one for my father. My sister's has Roku built in and my father's has GoogleTV built in. Meanwhile my sister dug out an old game console and wanted to see if we could get it to work. Upon unboxing and attempting to use the new TVs, I found absolutely no way to access an HDMI port without going through the process of creating and logging into an account on each. My next TV will be a dumb TV.
Current-year Vizios have no problem using ARC or whatever it is, and the smart/network stuff is completely disabled. It just works with whatever HDMI is sending it.
The smart stupidity is why I didn't cry at all when the kids broke the Samsung piece of shit. Vizio has my vote, at least for now.
> I found absolutely no way to access an HDMI port without going through the process of creating and logging into an account on each.
This is crazy and infuriating. I would have returned both TVs to the store if this happened to me. Was this advertised on the box? This feels like it shouldn't be legal because you're being forced into a legal agreement after purchasing the product.
