We've had a Chromecast in the house for a while, and it's been awesome. Really easy to put stuff on the TV, and cheap too! When I noticed the Nexus Players received a price cut though, I couldn't resist. My one real complaint about the Chromecast was the fact that it only had 2.4GHz wireless. Wireless N helped a little bit, but unfortunately we live in a 16 unit apartment, which has a 2.4GHz wireless router in each unit... For something as sensitive as streaming media, that's a recipe for disaster. Although most of the time the Chromecast was good, you'd get good hiccups with HD content in the evenings when everyone was online. The TV we have has 5GHz wireless N, but it was still really slow and not at all a pleasure to operate. The Nexus Player however supports up to Wireless AC (2x2 MIMO), which is fast as hell, provided we have an AC router. (At the moment we don't but we'll take advantage of the 5GHz wireless N anyway). So, the Nexus player is basically a beefy Chromecast, with built in and downloadable apps and games, and voice search. It's a nice replacement, looks good, feels good, operates quickly. Let's just hope that Google doesn't plan to wrap up the idea of Android TV.
Also back to 3 monitors! I ended up getting a 25" LG Ultrawide for ~200 dollars as a birthday gift for myself. My GTX670 still pushes 2560x1080 about as well as 1920x1080, judging by game performance in Battlefield and Borderlands, and the extra screen real estate is absolutely awesome for EVE online. I'd love to add an additional one, but I really don't have the desk space. I'll likely end up just switching my 19" for another 21.5" and keep things like that.
Last but not least, I ended up scouring the internet over vacation for a G Watch. Yes, it's one of the first Android Wear devices released, but guess what? The internal specs really haven't changed, even with the newer, higher end watches. They all run on the same chipset, with similar battery sizes, and similar sized screens. The only real difference is the quality of the screen and watch case, and if it does or doesn't have GPS/heartbeat sensor built in. Considering the 100 dollar price tag, and the fact that wear has been receiving pretty regular updates, I figured it's time to see what it's all about. I hope to have some pictures and a quick review up sometime after it's arrived.