Why has Giantbomb disabled watching videos on Chromecast?

Went to watch UPF in Chrome on android and cast it to my TV as I do every week and it says "Unable to cast video due to site restrictions".

I went back and tested videos I had previously watched through Chromecast and they say the same thing.

Why are you blocking the use of Chromecast?

Giantbomb hates freedom.

We are not doing anything to intentionally block Chromecast. I don't know why that's happening. Is it every video on the site? Can you try it with a gamespot.com video?

@laika: Yes, it is every video. Checked Gamespot and they give the same restriction message.

That's strange, it works fine for me under the same circumstances.

Tried again on Chrome Beta on Nexus 5, normal Chrome on Nexus 7, and normal Chrome on Galaxy S3, all on 2 different wifi networks - still get site restriction message.

Steps:

Play a video in the browser. It will play the html5 version.

Press to full screen.

Chromecast icon will show in top left.

On pressing it says "Unable to cast video due to site restrictions".

Happens to all GB and GS videos.

Works fine on other sites.

I don't have an android device to test with but casting a chrome tab from my pc and watching a GB video fullscreen works fine for me.

Since you're using chromecast can't you just use Giantbomb video buddy app? I feel like I read a note in the app and the forum here about it.

Ya same thing happens to me. Chromecast is the major way I view GB content. If that is how it is going forth I'll have to reconsider my subscription. Not trying to be a dick, but casting UPF accounts for a lot of the value for me.

I just used GB Video Buddy to do this like 3 hours ago. Worked fine.

I'm literally casting to chromecast now and it works fine. What region do you live in?

Hmm I live in the southeast. I'm talking about casting from a tablet when you enlarge a video with the chrome browser and press cast on the top left. Not casting a tab. YouTube works fine for free content. I don't really want to try a second party app, and I looked at it on the play store and it said no premium.

@laika: anything happening with this? Not much point having a premium subscription if I can't watch premium content on my TV.

Did you try chromecasting from this app?

Giant Bomb Video Buddy

@dayve86: It doesn't do subscriber content. There were no problems casting from Chrome until about a week ago so something must have changed on the back end.

@thethirdman said:

I assure you, it does do Subscriber content. Go to settings and link the code you get at http://giantbomb.com/boxee.

@bryce525: This is most likely a chromecast issue and not a Giantbomb issue. Have you tried clearing the browser's cache? Checking for app updates? Searching Chromecast support threads?

Preliminary search brings up this: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=336823

Seems to be discussing the same issue. They think it's happening on videos that don't have CORS enabled. I don't know if GB videos do or don't have that enabled, perhaps that's something they can check.

Is your tablet the only available device to stream from? Because PC tab casting still seems to work perfectly fine for the site.

I just did a quick bit of testing and it appears that the Auto quality setting will fail, but HD/High/Low will work. Picking a specific quality will point the browser right at an mp4 file, which Chromecast can easily handle, but Auto makes use of HLS, which--as @hellodanni mentions--can run into CORS issues. The default Chromecast media receiver is hosted on gstatic.com, so I believe (though I could certainly be wrong) if GB/GS can add it to their allowed origins for CORS that will clear things up.

In the meantime, you should be able to get around the issue by selecting a specific quality before you start streaming. If that isn't working you could also try Giant Bomb Video Buddy, though that's a bit of a self-serving suggestions since I wrote the thing. :)

Ended up using video buddy which I now prefer. Thanks!