The march of content providers into the living room is getting yet another boost as JW Player, whose video solution is used by thousands of content providers, will support Chromecast. JW Player's CEO Dave Otten and creator Jeroen Wijering told me yesterday that the beta is underway with 5 different content providers implementing JW Player with Chromecast support, which will go live over the next several weeks.

JW Player will support VAST-compliant advertising, so that video ads will be viewable on TVs when playing through Chromecast. As this demo video shows, JW Player has also enhanced its ad implementation by enabling companion banners to appear on the device driving the Chromecast, so users can engage with the advertiser as their video ad plays on the big screen.

With Amazon's Fire TV launching yesterday, the connected TV device space is getting further crowded, but Jeroen is particularly bullish on Chromecast's approach. As he wrote in a recent blog post, he likes the fact that Chromecast uses standard web programming languages, making it relatively straightforward for developers to integrate Chromecast support. And he likes that Chromecast eliminates the remote control, instead embracing the mobile device, with its rich UI, as the input.

These - and Chromecast's ultra-low $35 price - are critical reasons that it is ramping up with content providers, recently adding Crackle, Rdio, VUDU and others. Earlier this week it was reported that a Chromecast was sold every 4.5 seconds at big UK retailer Dixons on launch day there.

Meanwhile, Dave and Jeroen said JW Player continues its momentum, with it now used on 2.5 million web sites, driving 8 billion monthly video streams, which they believe is about 5% of all global streams. In December alone, over 750 million people watched video through the JW Player.