Using Chromecast.

The day Chromecast was announced, I ordered mine, and have been using it every day, no exaggeration.  With the latest update however, Chromecast has made a huge leap, such that it's now possible to make it the center of your audio visual system.  This is roughly how I would want my system to be set up, and generally is set up this way, except that I only have one TV connected and my storage is a single-drive NAS, no RAID.

Undoubtedly there are many variations, but this can be your template.  The NAS is not shown as attached to the router, even though in reality it is, but if you cast content via a Chrome browser, you're actually doing it the way as shown.

Now, if you set up a Plex environment, then the NAS would instead be directed to the router and not the computer.  This however requires quite a bit more complexity in that you have to install the software to your NAS, for which there are limited options to choose from, for support.

So what can you do?  Here's the basic list:

• Videos can be streamed via supported Android / iOS apps on your tablet and phone, or within Chrome browser's featured apps and extensions.  This includes YouTube, Vevo, Hulu+, Netflix, HBO Go, Revision3 and many others.
• Music can be streamed via supported Android  / iOS apps on your tablet and phone, or within the Chrome browser, including Google Music, Pandora and Songza.  There'll probably be others to follow shortly, but I personally think music videos are better.
• Local content (music, photos or videos) can be streamed, either indirectly via dragging and dropping content to a Chrome browser tab that you cast to your TV, or directly by installing software onto your NAS and installing apps to your smart phone, tablet and / or desktop computers to push content directly from your NAS to a TV.

What is missing:

• The ability to stream photo albums directly from Flickr, Picasa (Google+ Photos) and others.  I suppose the next step is streaming photo albums and music simultaneously, eh?
• A wider assortment of supporting apps for music, including Spotify, Tunein (or some other Shoutcast / Icecast streaming audio), Slacker, and Soundcloud.
• Better artwork support, or random imagery support for Google Play Music streaming and other streaming audio sites, because those fixed images or a lack of imagery ruins the experience and burns into a plasma TV.
• A broader support for video streaming, including Crackle, Dailymotion and Vimeo.
• Games.  It can be done.  If you cast a tab running this Chrome Experiment, using your smart phone as the controller, you've essentially got a gaming system, albeit with a bit of a delay.  The implications are huge and the possibilities, wide.

Should you buy it now?  Well, surely some time next year Google will have Chromecast 2.0 with better specs, right?  If you've got two TVs, you might as well buy one now and play with it.  Then, if / when Google introduces Chromecast 2.0, you can switch the second device to a smaller TV that is used mainly for watching online videos.  Or you can always sell your Chromecast 1.0 dongle.

This is the revolution in content access that I'd been holding out for, all these years.