Here is a temporary fix (supposedly). Solely for streaming music, I did not need to do this. Going into options and changing to 480P solved the problem. While that is less than an ideal solution, it doesn't degrade streaming music. Anyway, per Google:
Hey Everyone,
I just posted indicating that we've now updated the Google Cast (Beta) extension, and plan to update the stable extension tomorrow morning. The text of the new post, created to save users from reading 5 pages here, is below. I really appreciate all the reports here, and the many of you who helped validate the experimental fix. If I can ask one more favor - it'd be really great if those of you affected by this issue can confirm that running Chrome 39 + the latest Google Cast (Beta) extension, version 14.1027.0.1, solves the problem. Once you have that version, there's no need to tweak a DSCP setting, we simply disabled that setting for now.
Thanks again for all your help, and sorry for the inconvenience!
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Thanks for all the feedback about tab casting issues with Chrome 38 on Windows 7, and to the generous efforts of forum users in trying out an experimental extension that we used to confirm the problem on affected systems. We've now published an updated version of the Google Cast extension which allows you to work around the problem. The following steps are required at this time:
1. Install Chrome 39 (or later). Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to update Chrome 38 at this point in time; however, Chrome 39 already has improvements that allow us to work around this issue from an extension level. In late November, Chrome 39 will be the default release distributed to all users of Chrome. In the meantime, there are two ways that you can use Chrome 39:
Install Google Chrome Beta. This will update your main Chrome install, and will put you on the beta channel until you decide to switch back. This means you'll get updates and fixes sooner, but the beta channel can be less stable than the default install of Chrome.
Install Google Chrome Canary. This runs alongside your regular Chrome install, so you can use this temporarily until Chrome 39 is deployed to all users. Canary is updated very often, however, and is generally not stable enough to use as your primary browser.
2. Update to the latest Google Cast extension. As of 10/27 @ 10pm Pacific, we've just published a new version of the extension, 14.1027.0.1, for users on our beta channel. This will roll out to all users starting tomorrow morning, once we confirm that it does workaround the issue as expected. To force an update of the extension, go to chrome://extensions, and if you see an older version number, check "Developer Mode'", and then click the button that says "Update Extensions Now".
In addition to solving the issue where casting freezes after ~5 minutes, this can also address an issue that a much smaller number of users encountered where video just stops updating a few seconds after casting begins.
For the technically curious, the root cause of this issue is that we enabled the use of DSCP to enable prioritization of tab casting traffic (so that other traffic on your Wi-Fi network has less of an impact on the steady video stream needed for smooth video). While statistics showed that this worked well, on a small but meaningful percentage of Windows 7 based systems, this would cause network level errors that would result in Chrome freezing. Users on Windows 8, 8.1, Mac OS, and Chrome OS were not affected, and most Windows 7 based systems were also fine. For now, we've disabled DSCP; in a future update, we'll turn it back on for systems where we know it's safe, and where we expect it will improve the mirroring experience.
On behalf of the team, I apologize for any inconvenience that this has caused, especially since the workaround above isn't trivial. I'd also really like to thank the many of you on the forums and community that helped us in getting a workaround. out for this issue.
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