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I’ve found another fun way to exercise, and so far I’ve been excited to dig into it every day. It only works for those that have an Oculus Quest (or Quest 2) VR headset, but it’s pretty neat. It’s called Supernatural — here is their promo video:

The big downside to it, of course, is that you need a VR headset. The Oculus Quest 2 is down to $299, which is quite a good deal, but still a decent chunk of change. As time marches on, though, these devices will continue to get better and cheaper.

The Workout

As for Supernatural itself, it’s a rather intense game. It shares some basic core ideas with Beat Saber by having you hit objects that fly by, but does a few things differently.

First, it goes well beyond just swinging and hitting objects, though that’s certainly the main focus. There are a lot of squats in each workout, and they turn the scene in different directions to keep things moving.

More importantly, the objects you hit are intended to make you move in larger motions with your full arm, whereas Beat Saber lends itself to more “flicking” at objects as they pass by. After 20 minutes, it makes a big difference!

The Music

The music in the game is extraordinary and extensive. I’ve seen a lot of great songs already, and this list shows well over 300 in total, with more being added all the time. They add a new workout every day, which consists of 2-5 songs (depending on total workout duration). I suspect most of those daily workouts use songs already in their system, but it helps keep things fresh.

The Price

This could be the downfall. I’m in the middle of my 30 day trial, but after that it’s $19/mo. That’s not an awful price compared to other home workout apps like Peloton or Mirror, but it’s not insignificant.

As of now, I still feel kind of like the woman in the video above — I really look forward to traveling to crazy places and working up a sweat. We’ll see if that feeling keeps up after a few more weeks.

If you have an Oculus Quest, I certainly encourage you to give Supernatural a look. If you need an excuse to get a Quest, this could be a good one to use!

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I’ve been a big fan of Google Chromecast since it first came out back in 2013. It’s a cheap device ($35) that makes your TV do some magic. If you’re not familiar with them, this video gives a nice overview — note that the video is nearly five years old, so some things have certainly changed, but the basic idea is still the same.

When I decided to finally cut the cord a few days, I thought I knew everything I needed to know about Chromecast. I was wrong. I had the basic idea right, and things are working as expected, but I’ve discovered a few things I felt were worth sharing.

Most of the major streaming services work with Chromecast (YouTube TV, Sling TV, Hulu Live, Netflix, DIRECTV NOW), with the major exception being Amazon Prime Video — and that’s simply due to pettiness between Amazon and Google.

For what we need, it works great.

Not all Chromecasts are created equal

When Google released a slightly newer Chromecast in 2016, I didn’t think much of it. Reviews said it was essentially the same, and I didn’t think I needed one. I used ours relatively infrequently, and when I did it worked fine. We eventually had two TVs with the old one and two with the new one, and I considered them equals.

With live TV, though, it was a different story. Shows from Sling would skip more frequently than I’d like, and YouTube TV would give a warning every time that I should update my Chromecast for a better experience. They were right.

The differences between the two models are subtle, but important. The new model actually has less memory, but much better connectivity and a slightly faster processor. The old one could cache a bit more data (and thus Netflix always worked fine for me), but simply didn’t have the speed to keep up perfectly with live TV. Now that all of our TVs in the house are using the “new” Chromecast (from 2016), the difference is quite noticeable and all is running great.

Keep it plugged in

Another reason I didn’t use Chromecast too often before was because of the hassle. It’s totally a first-world hassle, but it was enough to turn me off.

• For regular TV, you turn it on and get watching.
• For Chromecast, turn on the TV, change the input, wait for it to boot up, then start your show. Not a big deal, but adds up if you have to do it frequently.

Now that we no longer have “regular” TV, changing the input is no longer a problem — the TV always stays on the Chromecast “channel”. However, the TV comes on faster than Chromecast is able to boot up, so there’s still a lag there. The reason is because Chromecast needs external power (you plug one end into your TV, and the other end into a power source) and so it’s often turned off when the TV is off.

Since the Chromecast came with a USB plug, and most of our TVs have a USB outlet, I plugged it in there. It worked! However, when the TV was off it disabled power to that outlet, and turned the Chromecast off as well. I’ve now run the power for the Chromecast to a normal wall outlet, so it stays on even if the TV is turned off.

Not only does that eliminate lag when it turns on, but with most TVs you can “cast” something to the Chromecast and it’ll turn on the TV for you and start playing right away. Pretty handy.

Backdrop could be so awesome

When your Chromecast and TV are turned on but you’re not casting anything, you’re looking at the Chromecast “backdrop”. It looks something like this:

It’s pretty neat. It shows photos from around the world in categories you can choose from, including pulling from your own Google Photos or Facebook. You can have it show the weather in the corner, and even pull in some news headlines.

It’s great, but it could be so much more. I’ve seen various articles about smart mirrors over the years, and it would seem to be pretty simple to integrate those kinds of features into backdrop.

If you’ve ever read an article about DIY “smart mirrors”, they spend most of the time talking about finding the right mirror, trimming stuff off of the tablet, mounting it together, getting power and wifi to it, etc. With Chromecast, all of that stuff is already done — all that’s left is the content piece, which is relatively easy.

Chromecast is already connected to my Google account (hence the ability to add my photos). It would seem to be pretty straightforward to add my next few calendar events, commute time, and some basic info like that.

All of that said, it’s still kind of nice. The TV can just sit there ready for you, showing amazing photography and the weather info.

I’m still a big Chromecast fan, but now I’m much more educated about it too.

Do you use Chromecasts in your house?

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Despite my constant desire for the latest and greatest technology, I’ve held onto traditional TV delivery until today. We did some digging and just made the switch from Uverse TV (which was really pretty solid) to a handful of streaming services: Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV and Sling TV.

When AT&T added fiber internet to our neighborhood a few years ago, we jumped on it. The speeds are amazing, and even the TV prices were much lower than Comcast. It was a no-brainer. Now we’re taking it a step further and going with just the fiber internet from them and cutting everything else — we had four DVRs and a bunch of channels. Taking internet by itself (and removing the “bundle discount”) raised the internet price a bit, but still brought our total price down by $152/mo. We added $92 worth of streaming services, for a total savings of about $60/mo.

Starting my research, my only requirement is that it must work with Google Chromecast (since we have them on every TV). That ruled out the Philo service, which otherwise looked pretty solid. We also ruled out DIRECTV NOW; it’s a solid service, but Sling TV worked out better for us.

Here’s what we went with:

Netflix: $10.99

We’ve had Netflix for the past few years anyhow, so this wasn’t a new expense. Lots of great shows and movies in there.

YouTube TV: $40

This is the main service we’ll be using. Not only does it have a ton of good content, but the interface is the best of any of the services out there. It feels a bit more like a traditional cable interface, which might be why I like it.

Sling TV: $44.99

The Sling pricing is a bit weird, but ultimately got us what we needed. YouTube TV covered most of our needs, but Sling added Food Network, HGTV, NFL Red Zone and a bunch of others (Comedy Central, more kids channels, History, MTV, etc). We’re signed up for their “Sling Blue” ($24.99) along with “Sports Extra” ($10) and the “4 Extras” ($10) for more comedy, kids, news and lifestyle.

Hulu: $7.99

Hulu has “Hulu Live” ($39.99), which is similar to Sling and YouTube, but was unnecessary since we had those other two services. However, getting some of the other core Hulu services helped us to round things out.

As we were sorting things out, I build a spreadsheet of the core channels on YouTube TV and Sling TV (with the options outlined above) so we could see how things were covered. While they duplicate quite a few channels, they have a lot on each site that are not on the other. Between the two of them, we have pretty much everything. You can see the full comparison in this PDF.

As an added bonus, YouTube TV works well with Google Home and Chromecast (and we have both in most rooms), so now I can just yell “Hey Google, play the Braves game on YouTube TV in the family room” and it’ll start up. Pretty slick.

Have you cut the cable yet? Which streaming service(s) are you using?

Reading Time: 2 minutesI’m a big fan of Google products for two main reasons:

1 – In general, they’re pretty great products (Gmail, Maps, Docs, etc).
2 – They tend to work on every major platform.

Item #2 is why I encourage people to choose the Google Chromecast over Apple TV (or Amazon’s Fire Stick) when looking for a streaming device. We have one on every TV in our house, and it’s the primary tool we use on the TV in our office.

What is Chromecast?

If you’re not familiar with Chromecast, this video from Marques Brownlee does a good job of showing how it works:

Note that his video is a few years old, and many other services are now compatible with it. As Marques explains, the beauty of Chromecast is that it doesn’t stream from your phone — your phone just tells it what to do and then Chromecast pulls the content directly from the internet. This makes for a very smooth experience and saves battery life on your phone.

Apple TV is kind of the opposite; it doesn’t do much on its own, and requires that your device constantly pushes content to it. This have some advantages, since there is no limit to the content you can push that way, but it has some downsides. Apple TV also only works on Apple devices, while Chromecast works on Apple devices, as well as Android and Windows.

What about the Amazon Fire Stick?

This is the one “catch” with Chromecast. Because Amazon has their own competing product, none of the Prime Video streaming content works with Chromecast. It’s not a shortcoming of the Chromecast, per se, but it’s simply that Amazon would prefer that you buy their device. If you need to have your Prime Video shows, the the Amazon Fire Stick might be a good choice. If you typically use other services such as YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, etc, Chromecast is the way to go.

For only $30, it’s a pretty easy choice to make.

How many Chromecasts do you own?