TV Cast | Ultimate Edition

Review by eFreeware

If you already use one of the free Video & TV Cast apps to push web video from your phone to a TV, the Ultimate Edition is the paid key that switches on the extra features. It is not a player in its own right. It sits on your device as a license, and the free casting app you actually browse with picks up the premium layer from it. If you cast a lot of browser video to a living room screen, that is the situation this app is built for.

The appeal is that one purchase covers the whole family of free editions rather than a single one. The developer counts nine of them, covering Chromecast, Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense, Sharp, TiVo, Roku, Fire TV, DLNA and Google Cast devices. Buy once and the premium features follow you whichever of those apps you happen to have installed. For someone who moves between a bedroom Roku and a living room Samsung set, that is a tidier arrangement than paying per app.

A key rather than a player

The way this works takes a moment to get used to. You install the Ultimate app, then you install whichever free Video & TV Cast edition matches your hardware. The developer asks you to open the Ultimate app once after installing, and says a confirmation message appears when the unlock succeeds. After that, premium is active in the free apps as long as the key stays on the device.

That last point is the one to take seriously. Removing the Ultimate app reverts every one of those editions to its non-premium state, so the key is meant to stay put. If you restore your phone or move to a new one and the features disappear, the developer's own advice is to restart the device, clear the Ultimate app's stored data, then restart once more.

The free apps and the key both need to be current. None of this is unusual for a browser-based casting tool, but it does mean the setup is a two-part job rather than a single download.

What the paid layer adds to browsing

The headline premium feature is an ad blocker for the sites you visit through the casting browser. It targets the advertisements, popups and redirects that those pages throw at you. Anyone who has tried to watch a video on a page crowded with overlays will understand why this is the feature the developer leads with, and it is the one most likely to change how pleasant the browsing side feels.

The second addition is a playbar and remote control, which brings fast forward, rewind and scrubbing to video you are casting. The developer notes that this depends on what the receiving device can do, so it is worth checking against your own hardware rather than assuming full control everywhere. When it works, it turns a cast into something closer to normal playback.

There is also a desktop mode that presents your device to websites as a desktop computer. The developer's stated purpose is helping some sites expose their video links, which is a common obstacle when a page refuses to serve its player to a mobile browser. Whether a given site cooperates is not something the app can guarantee.

Bookmarks, homepage and a quieter browser

The remaining premium features are about making the browser feel like your own. You can set a personal homepage and have the app remember the last page you were on, which saves retracing your steps each time you sit down to watch something. Bookmarks are unlimited, so you can keep a library of sites and individual videos without pruning it.

The developer also removes its own sponsoring advertisements from the paid editions. That is a separate matter from the site ad blocker: one deals with the pages you load, the other with the app itself. Together they make the browsing side noticeably less cluttered than the free arrangement, though I would treat the ad blocker as a tool for reducing noise rather than a promise that every page will behave.

As with the playbar, the developer points out that some capabilities vary by streaming device and may not appear in every edition. The premium set is consistent in name across the apps, but the hardware underneath still decides what is possible.

Nine dollars and what it covers

The Ultimate Edition costs $9.99 as a one-time purchase. There are no advertisements in the app itself and no in-app purchases, so the price you see is the whole cost. The developer frames it as getting nine apps for the price of two, which is a fair description of the coverage if you genuinely use more than one of the free editions.

Refunds are only available within 24 hours of purchase, and you need to supply the Google purchase ID with the request. That window is short, so if you are unsure whether the premium features will work with your particular TV or streaming box, it is worth settling that question quickly after buying rather than weeks later.

The free Video & TV Cast apps remain free and functional without this key. What you are buying is the playbar, the homepage and history options, desktop mode, unlimited bookmarks and the removal of the developer's own promotional messages. If none of those matter for how you watch, the free editions cover the core casting job on their own.

How it compares with other ways to cast

The obvious alternative is casting straight from a phone's built-in share menu to a Chromecast or Android TV device. That costs nothing and works well when the video lives in an app that supports it. The gap this app fills is the browser: pages that never offer a cast button, or that bury their video behind a player your phone cannot hand off. A dedicated casting browser is the tool for that specific problem.

Another route is a streaming stick or set-top box with its own browser and remote. Those keep everything on the television, but browsing with a remote is slow, and typing a web address that way is worse. Using the phone as the browser and the TV as the screen is the more comfortable arrangement, which is the model this app follows.

There are also paid desktop casting tools and media server setups. Those tend to be aimed at local files and home libraries rather than web pages, and they usually involve more configuration. If your habit is watching online video in a browser and sending it to a TV, the Video & TV Cast approach is the closer fit; if your library is on a hard drive, it is not the same job.

A reasonable buy for regular casters

At 100,000-plus installs and a 4.0 average across 2,938 ratings, this is a modest but established purchase rather than a mainstream one, which fits a utility that only makes sense alongside the free apps. It has been on Google Play since November 2016, and its recent updates have focused on bug fixes and compatibility improvements.

My read is that the Ultimate Edition is worth the $9.99 for people who already cast browser video often enough to be annoyed by site ads, missing playback controls and a browser that forgets where they were. The three-part setup, the need to keep the key installed and the device-dependent nature of the playbar are the trade-offs you accept in return.

If you cast occasionally, or only from apps that already have a cast button, the free editions will do the job and this key adds little. For the regular browser-caster with more than one screen in the house, the coverage across nine editions makes the single price easier to justify.

What's new in version 1.7

- Bugfixes and improved compatibility We hope you enjoy the app. If you have issues, feedback, or feature requests, please let us know via email to [email protected]. Please rate us on Google Play == It‘s very quick and will help us improve this app to provide you with better features and services.