Blocking ads on the chromecast I personally do not like using a chromecast (opensource ftw) but we have one and other people do. One thing I really hate about it, is ads. Although hacking the chromecast is beyond my skill level, and obviously there is no config option for turning them off, the chromecast still utilizes the local network to get ads and therefore can be blocked at the router level. Most router OS's from the manufacturer are crippled beyond even the most basic functionality so I flashed mine with Shibby's tomato firmware from http://tomato.groov.pl To block ads on the chromecast then involves first a network-wide adblocker, which the tomato firmware easily provides in its web interface. This is not sufficient however as ads are only blocked if the host is using the router as its dns server. The chromecast has been hardcoded to use google's dns servers so we then set a couple static routing rules to send requests to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 to the router at 192.168.1.1. Together, we have an ad-free experience :)