At a July 24 media event in San Francisco, Sundar Pichai - Google's SVP of Android and Chrome - unveiled the new Nexus 7 and a $35-priced Chromecast --- a handset- and tablet-controlled dongle which enables users to direct video content to the TV via a smartphone, tablet or PC.

Bringing new convenience to the TV-viewing experience, the Chromecast is a simple 2-inch long device which looks a USB thumb drive. It plugs into the High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) slot on an HDTV; and is compatible with smartphones, tablets, and PCs running the Android OS, the iOS and the Windows software.

The services with which the Chromecast initially works include YouTube, Netflix, Google Play Music, and Google Play Movies & TV, Google Play Music; with support for some more apps - like Pandora - to be added soon.

Since the Chromecast essentially casts content from the cloud to the TV, the users' smartphone, tablet, or PC becomes the remote control that facilitates the content casting process. To put it differently, Chromecast streams content from the users' devices to their TV.

To set up Chromecast, users just have to know the basics of downloading and running a program on their devices, and their wireless network password. Once Chromecast has been set up, everything else happens on the users' smartphone, tablet or PC; and, as Pichai said at the Chromecast launch event, the device "just automatically works."