Google takes a further stab at the living room entertainment dream with Chromecast, a solution to pushing online video content from mobile devices to TVs within an HDMI dongle the size of a USB thumb drive.

The Chromecast connects to the internet via wifi and allows users to view online content (such as YouTube, Netflix and Google Play videos) on HDTVs, with smartphones, tablets and PCs acting as remote controls.

It runs on a stripped down version of ChromeOS and supports HTML5 and Flash audio/video-- no local, Quicktime or Silverlight file support as yet.

In other words, so long a video runs in a Chrome browser window and is not in Quicktime the Chromecast will play it. The device is cross-platform, being compatible with Android, Windows and iOS devices.

Since it streams from the cloud the Chromecast does not actually "use" the mobile device in use as remote, leaving it available for other uses or free to put in sleep mode.

The Chromecast is available now in the US, and a European launch should follow sometime soon.

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