> We had this coming. Over the years, the various chromecasts in our house are slowly getting worse. I had the sense they are cutting costs on the software and servers powering these devices.

I can't imagine they will get better. It seems smart devices always crap out after a few years. I am regretting buying my Samsung TV last Fall because it's already slowing down. It takes 5 seconds to load the options menu.

Sometimes I wonder if this is it right here. Internally they think something like this:

Dev 1: “Well we have this backlog of bug reports and issues for Chrimecast”

Dec 2: “Ugh. I don’t want to do maintenance. Acknowledgment of there bugs will be a black mark on my career!”

Dev 1: “Lets re-brand it and close all the bugs. Now those bugs become features and we start with a clean slate!”

Just plug an external streaming box into it and move on. Embedded apps were always a dumb idea. Double bonus - disconnecting the TV from the 'net will stop their spying on you too.

This is totally true, but unfortunately it is hard to find a good TV that doesn't have embedded software. So whether or not I plug in a Roku, my options menu will always be handled by the TVs OS.

I wonder if there is a way to reset the firmware? My wife connected out Samsung TV to the interwebs and triggered an update. It is not notacibly slower but there are ads placeholders.