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Chromecast already rooted, revealed to be running software closer to Google TV than Chrome OS

Chromecast-teardown-iFixit

Just a few days after its announcement, Google’s new Chromecast stick has already been rooted. The rooting process, as detailed by GTV Hacker, is similar to almost every Android phone. During the announcement last week, Google said that the Chromecast was powered by Chrome OS, but GTV Hacker has found something different.

The blog says that after rooting and doing a little digging around within the software, it looks like the Chromecast is running software closer to Android or Google TV, not Chrome OS as Google implied. While this doesn’t mean all that much for the end user, it does leave the door open for an eventual port of the full Google TV operating to the tiny HDMI stick or the ability to install standalone apps at some point.

We had a lot of internal discussion on this, 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.

We are not ruling out the ability for this to become a Google TV “stick”.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google has been working on an Android-powered set-top box, so it’s possible that it the device may be some sort of advanced variation of the Chromecast. 

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