My experience with it is much like yours. Freaks me out regularly when the app closes or, even worse, the tablet spontaneously reboots, and the TV just keeps on playing. When the app comes back it thinks somebody else is using the dongle, and you just know you'll have to start over and watch commercials if you take over the chromecast now. And so you're back in the age of no control over the broadcast TV, you just let it run to the end.

Yep, there was a short extender HDMI pigtail in the package, two years ago. There's a new Chromecast out just now that concedes the inevitable and has a built-in pigtail cord, as well as a new round shape. The main other benefit of the second release is that it can use 5GHz wifi, making it significantly faster (less likely to have to buffer).

I'm still positive about the Chromecast, even as my use of Amazon's FireTV stick has declined to about zero. Google, as usual, got the minimalist design right, it just streams very well. My new TV (i.e. with RF, as opposed to flat panel display) has Roku built-in, but I haven't set it up, because the whole "Smart TV" thing leaves me cold. That's the kind of bundling-for-profit mentality I'm trying to escape as a cord-cutter.