Chromecast video quality is atrocious though. I have a Chromecast Ultra on my Roku TV (TCL 6-series QLED) considered to be a mid-range panel and has decent color accuracy, but on Chromecast all of it is out the window, the same video on the YouTube TV (native app) on Roku is so much better looking and accurate.
That's interesting because what I forgot to mention is that while I have a 4K TV, it seems that the Roku apps refuse to play anything at a 4K resolution. The Chromecast Ultra seems to output 4K just fine.
I haven't noticed any differences in color though, so I can't speak to that. Maybe the HDMI input has different picture settings set than the base Roku? I'm sure you've tried that though, so I don't know.
Huh, that... just doesn't jive with my experience at all, though I have a newer LG OLED TV. My Chromecast is able to play 4K UHD/HDR content perfectly.
That being said, when I first use a new input on my TV, I sometimes forget that each input has its own profile on my TV, and have to shut off the stupid smooth motion modes and adjust colors, etc. Are you sure this isn't the case on your TV?
Getting devices and tvs to play nice can be a pain for any given set - I don’t have a roku but comparing builtin YouTube/Netflix on a 4K hdr Sony oled with chrome cast and Apple TV they were all about the same with built in performing the best (optimized for the tv I presume) - apple tv with infuse using Emby as a library was best
Chrome cast is also greatly affected by what your casting with, VLC, Videostream, chrome can all produce very different results depending on the content
Hard to tell (probably both), but it's worth noting for most of these OSes (at least Roku or Android TV) the playback is generally being handed to the hardware native decoder rather than having anything to do with the OS.
Indeed, one of the nice things about Android TV is that from a content protection point of view you don't really need to trust the OS at all as it's all abstracted down to the hardware.
Not sure who’s to blame here.