So Google has decided to enter the TV delivery era. Again. That being said, it looks — to me — like they have a winner.

So let’s step back, Television of old, where things were pushed to us by the producers of a show (or the advertisers that supported the producers) is dying. Just like Cable took over from Broadcast TV, the idea of “pull TV” is settling in and becoming an accepted — and profitable — alternative.

The DVR has helped us moved into this new space, no longer do we consider ourselves married to our regular Monday night show being seen on, well, on Monday night. We expect to “DVR it” and see it when we like.

Now comes the next generation, with the Hulus and NetFlix (who is producing it’s own TV shoes) we now expect to be able to sit down and watch an episode, or a season, when we want.

Okay, so back to Google. Google tried it before with a bulky and rather painful device that acted like a poorly programmed cable box, now comes ChromeCast. At $35 expectations can’t be too high. But ChromeCast exceeds those expectations by getting out of the way of the content. Instead of trying to force feed you a poorly emulated 500-channel cable experience, ChromeCast instead acts as an entertainment hub that works pretty flawlessly with any TV that has an HDMI port.

When you open the ChromeCast box it’s a simple well designed install, just plug in the ChromeCast and if you have the latest of TVs where the HDMI port supplies power you’re set. Otherwise you need to plug in the supplied USB power cable to the ChromeCast dongle and then watch the lights start blinking.

Assuming you have wireless (and if you don’t forget it, that’s what you need) you simple go to any wireless computer within about 30 feet of your TV, go to the install URL and your PC searches the airwaves for any non-configured dongles. When it finds one it asks you if the number it’s showing on your computer is the same as what’s being seen on your TV, you say yes and then provided it with your WiFi information.

And you’re done. You’re now ready to “cast”.

So the beauty behind ChromeCast is unlike similar types of technologies the programming that you want to see doesn’t have to be running on your phone and tablet and then re-broadcast to your TV. Instead, once you’ve updated a couple of the apps you probably already have (such as Chrome, YouTube or NetFlix) you simply select and play your favorite episode as you normally would and then press the CAST button to have it transferred from your device to the TV. At this point you can deep six your device, Google has taken over your TV and the video stream is now coming directly from the internet to your television (or rather the ChromeCast dongle).

If you choose to leave your device on you can easily skip forward or back or even turn down the volume coming out of your TV. You now have the coolest remote control, as you drag the “you are here” button on the play bar you see a little window that shows you what’s playing at that time mark. You can skip over sequences you don’t want to watch, like credits or opening spiels and just watch what you want to watch.

Right now the number of apps that are “ChromeCast” enabled are fairly small, but expect that to change.

And hey, for $35 what can you loose?

For more info go to: http://www.google.com/chromecast or order this on Amazon and see for yourself.