Well, that didn’t take long! Thanks to hard working developers over at GTVHacker, Google’s Chromecast streaming device has been rooted, opening up the door for some interesting uses for the device. One Reddit user even got the Chromecast to run a Game Boy emulator, much to his cat’s delight.
Interestingly enough, the dongle isn’t completely running on the ChromeOS, with GTVHacker coming to this conclusion about the issue:
“We had a lot of internal discussion on this, (whether the device runs ChromeOS) and have concluded that it’s more Android than ChromeOS. To be specific, it’s actually a modified Google TV release, but with all of the Bionic / Dalvik stripped out and replaced with a single binary for Chromecast. Since the Marvell DE3005 SOC running this is a single core variant of the 88DE3100, most of the Google TV code was reused. So, although it’s not going to let you install an APK or anything, its origins: the bootloader, kernel, init scripts, binaries, are all from the Google TV.”
That being said, it appears that the Chromecast could very well be the next step in the evolution of Google TV.
Keep your eyes peeled folks, there are sure to be many other awesome Chromecast abilities coming soon. Check out the video below to see a rooted Chromecast running a Game Boy emulator, accompanied by a cute, cuddly cat.
[Via: Droid Life , GTVHacker]