Control Chromecast with a Standard Remote

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how to control your Chromecast with a standard TV remote control and explain why you might want to.

I've tested out a bunch of streaming media devices and have ultimately settled on Chromecast as the tool of choice for our household.  If you are interested in my full rationale, you can check out my video on this, but basically, it's cheap, efficient, easy to use, and the original versions don't have their own easy-to-lose remote.  Chromecast has you use your own device (smart phone, tablet or computer) to choose the show you want to watch and then you simply hit a button in the app to cast it (or wirelessly stream it) to play on your TV or monitor or whatever you have your Chromecast attached to.   In 2020, Google launched Chromecast with Google TV which comes with it's own dedicated remote, but the original remote-less system is elegant and usually works well.

There are some issues of course.  First of all, sometimes your app -- say HBOMax -- will lose connection with the Chromecast, so it continues to play on the TV even though it's no longer playing in the app.  In that case, you have to go into the Google Home app, find the offending Chromecast and stop casting it there -- then you can always recast it from the HBOMax app.

But perhaps a bigger deal is that if you happen to get a phone call or a knock on the door, since the earlier Chromecast version didn't have their own remotes, in order to pause the show, you would need to log into your device, navigate to the app, wait for it to load up and then hit pause.  This process is long and annoying.  And sometimes you are getting a call on the very device that you need to use to pause the show -- which means you have to do all of this after you answer the phone, which is less than ideal.

Here's a solution to that problem that doesn't require you to have an separate dedicated remote.  You might be able to use your regular TV remote to also control your Chromecast.  What you'll need to do is enable something called HDMI-CEC on your TV.  HDMI-CEC stands for HDMI Consumer Electronics Control.  In short, it allows devices that are attached to the HDMI ports of your TV to have some influence over the TV itself and for the TV to be able to control some things on the devices -- basically it allows your TV and devices to communicate with each other in limited ways.  Don't despair if you can't find the setting for HDMI-CEC on your TV.  For whatever reason, each brand likes to call this feature something branded and cute -- on Phillips TVs it's called EasyLink, on Samsung it's Anynet+.  I have a list of popular brands and their HDMI-CEC nicknames in the description below courtesy of howtogeek.com). 

I'll walk you through how I enabled HDMI-CEC on my Vizio TV. First I went pressed the Menu button on my TV remote, then I chose Settings, from here I choose CEC Settings (that is what Vizio calls HDMI-CEC), and set the CEC function to "On".  And now it's enabled!

The controls that you have access to are still pretty limited, but I found this to be practically life changing.  You can hit Play on your remote to start action, Pause to stop action, and hitting Stop will break the connection between your app and your Chromecast.  I love this and will definitely opt to spend some time looking for the remote rather than have to use the time-consuming controls on the app on my device. 

Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!

Brand Nicknames for HDMI-CEC (courtesy of Howtogeek.com):

• AOC: E-link
• Hitachi: HDMI-CEC (Thank you, Hitachi!)
• LG: SimpLink or SIMPLINK (HDMI-CEC)
• Mitsubishi: NetCommand for HDMI
• Onkyo: RIHD (Remote Interactive over HDMI)
• Panasonic: HDAVI Control, EZ-Sync, or VIERA Link
• Philips: EasyLink
• Pioneer: Kuro Link
• Runco International: RuncoLink
• Samsung: Anynet+
• Sharp: Aquos Link
• Sony: BRAVIA Sync
• Toshiba: CE-Link or Regza Link
• Vizio: CEC