Chromebooks may soon be getting native Chromecast support

Chrome OS devices could soon be able to beam local media to any Chromecast streaming stick without the need to use any workarounds: Latest Chromium commits found by Chromestory.com suggest that the native Chrome OS video player is getting Chromecast support in the near future. Chromium developers recently started to separate the Chrome OS video player from the Files app and turn it into a standalone app. At the time, it looked like this was primarily about making it easier to use the Files app, which is essentially the Chrome OS version of the Finder in OS X or File Explorer in Windows, and the video player at the same time; however, it now looks like the update could also bring casting to Chrome OS. Currently, Chrome OS users have to load any media they want to cast into the Chrome browser and then use tab casting, which essentially mirrors the content of that browser tab. However, this process involves transcoding, which can degrade the quality if a video, and generally requires a pretty powerful computer to run smoothly.