6 ms·

Im baffles that afaict we have no standard wireless protocol to send a still image from a pc (Open architecture) or a mobile phone to a big screen such as slide

Im baffles that afaict we have no standard wireless protocol to send a still image from a pc (Open architecture) or a mobile phone to a big screen such as slides - never mind a video or reusing wifi

felixfbecker 7y ago
What about Miracast?
- hocuspocus 7y ago
  Sadly while my Nexus 4 could cast to almost any TV 7 years ago, Google had to decide to remove support from stock Android in 2015 and try to shove Chromecast down our throats instead. It seems to work well from Windows 10 though.
  - jsight 7y ago
    Its irritating how far we've gone away from standards. At least in the past there were efforts to push open solutions, but those seem to be steadily fading away.
    - nitrogen 7y ago
      Samsung still has Smart View; not sure what protocol(s) it uses, but it seems fairly general. One of the things that kills these common standards is that every company has to tack on its own obscuring trade name. DLNA, HDMI-CEC, probably others I can't remember have all had this. It's kind of a wonder that SMTP managed to be known as just "email", but even that is largely eroded into branded experiences.
    - BiteCode_dev 7y ago
      They noticed apple mostly got praises and money for it, while going standards means competition and losing control. Both bring angry geeks for different reasons, but as long as most people reward them for being locked up in a closed ecosystem, I don't see why they would change.
    - whoopdedo 7y ago
      The wooden spike through the heart of screen mirroring is DRM. Publishers were aghast that devices were "sharing" video feeds without having to pay per-viewer licensing fees back to them. Even when using supposedly compatible devices, like a Samsung flagship phone casting to a Samsung smart TV, you have no guarantee that the app won't block the streaming to protect their subscription model.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Miracast appears to be being deliberately killed - Intel took it out of some drivers, and sibling comment claims Google have removed it from Android.
- tjohns 7y ago
  Miracast never worked very well, in my experience. I don’t know where the failing was, but it really only worked reliably when the compute device and TV were from the same manufacturer. Cross-vendor compatibility was hit or miss. (It also didn’t help that different vendors used their own proprietary name for their Miracast feature - most users have no clue what Miracast is.)
- rodgerd 7y ago
  Apple never adopted it, which meant that you had Windows + Android able to use Miracast, but iOS not; AirPlay couldn't be used by the other side of the fence. DLNA could, in theory, be all things to all people, but like similar "all things" it's such a pain in the arse to get renderers and servers all talking to each other it never really "just works". Of course, all of that wouldn't necessarily be a problem except that Apple and Google are deeply invested in non-compatibility.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    There are quite a few TV manufacturers building in Airplay now.
  - GeekyBear 7y ago
    Apple already had it's own standard in place before Miracast was created. The audio only version of AirPlay (AirTunes) goes back a decade before Miracast, and the version that also supports video predates Miracast by two years. It would be nice to be able to add an iOS plugin to add system wide support for Miracast instead of just having some apps choose to support it.
zamadatix 7y ago
Miracast for the first two, not sure what you mean by reusing Wi-Fi but the various forms of what that can mean are pretty well covered as well (Wi-Fi Direct, adhoc, hotspot). The WiGig alliance (later with the Wi-Fi alliance) also have tons of standard protocols for sharing just about anything over 60 GHz Wi-Fi.
- BoorishBears 7y ago
  I recently got a Miracast dongle and it was a pretty bad experience. My PC would show corrupted video streams, my iPhone worked via an included app but lacked any sort of context awareness (just blindly mirrors the screen) and doesn’t work well with DRM I finally caved in after all these years and got an Apple TV and it’s so much nicer of an experience, even looking strictly at mirroring. Apps are context aware to the fact they’re mirroring, much lower latency from my PC (despite using a 3rd party app), no weird dependency on WiFi for initial pairing (Window's native mirroring won’t work with my Miracast device because my PC doesn’t have a WiFi card installed) I don’t know if it’s an ecosystem problem for Miracast (I’m pretty sure the only “high quality” implementation of it is the Microsoft adapter, but there’s an ocean of dongles that “support it”) or a technological limitation, but it wasn’t good
remir 7y ago
It is indeed quite frustrating. I can print from my phone without installing any app and it's awesome, but I wish I could do the same with sharing photos/videos on TVs.
- pests 7y ago
  Not for much longer https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-is-killing-google-cloud-print/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-is-killing-go...
  - est31 7y ago
    Google cloud print is not the only way to print from Android. Since 8.0 Oreo, Android supports printing via IPP, which a growing number of printers support. So at least in the printing domain, open standards are winning.
pjc50 7y ago
Arguably we have too many. Everything from Bluetooth to Airdrop to Miracast to DLNA. What we don't have is authentication, and that's what Google have delivered in the Chromecast; binding it to a Google Home account to do all the single-sign-on stuff. (At one point open bluetooth was a thing, immediately exploited to drop dick pics to random strangers on public transport)
- fenwick67 7y ago
  Literally anyone on my wifi can cast to my Chromecast, not sure what you're on about. The only thing being authenticated does is allows me to set the timezone, change the background art, and re-name it, which are all secondary features I don't need.
  - Smoosh 7y ago
    Being authenticated also allows Google to track your media consumption.
- notyourday 7y ago
  Huh? Given a box being able to reach Chromecast via standard IP routing and Chromecast being able to reach the box via a standard IP routing and a box being able to spinup a HTTP(s) sever one can cast to Chromecast. No need to be on a same network. Catt does it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sbr464 7y ago
Not sure what they used, but they had it on all 4 seasons of The Expanse. We should ask them. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/8ty16z/a_technology_that_needs_to_be_fast_tracked_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/8ty16z/a_techno...
- robbiep 7y ago
  We’ve got a couple hundred years to nail down the details
swiley 7y ago
X11 does this pretty easily for images, I’ve left raspis with X11 open to my personal network for this. Video won’t work well obviously. Lots of people dislike X11 and even more dislike the naked protocol.

Im baffles that afaict we have no standard wireless protocol to send a still image from a pc (Open architecture) or a mobile phone to a big screen such as slides - never mind a video or reusing wifi

felixfbecker 7y ago

What about Miracast?

hocuspocus 7y ago
Sadly while my Nexus 4 could cast to almost any TV 7 years ago, Google had to decide to remove support from stock Android in 2015 and try to shove Chromecast down our throats instead. It seems to work well from Windows 10 though.
- jsight 7y ago
  Its irritating how far we've gone away from standards. At least in the past there were efforts to push open solutions, but those seem to be steadily fading away.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    Samsung still has Smart View; not sure what protocol(s) it uses, but it seems fairly general. One of the things that kills these common standards is that every company has to tack on its own obscuring trade name. DLNA, HDMI-CEC, probably others I can't remember have all had this. It's kind of a wonder that SMTP managed to be known as just "email", but even that is largely eroded into branded experiences.
  - BiteCode_dev 7y ago
    They noticed apple mostly got praises and money for it, while going standards means competition and losing control. Both bring angry geeks for different reasons, but as long as most people reward them for being locked up in a closed ecosystem, I don't see why they would change.
  - whoopdedo 7y ago
    The wooden spike through the heart of screen mirroring is DRM. Publishers were aghast that devices were "sharing" video feeds without having to pay per-viewer licensing fees back to them. Even when using supposedly compatible devices, like a Samsung flagship phone casting to a Samsung smart TV, you have no guarantee that the app won't block the streaming to protect their subscription model.
pjc50 7y ago
Miracast appears to be being deliberately killed - Intel took it out of some drivers, and sibling comment claims Google have removed it from Android.
tjohns 7y ago
Miracast never worked very well, in my experience. I don’t know where the failing was, but it really only worked reliably when the compute device and TV were from the same manufacturer. Cross-vendor compatibility was hit or miss. (It also didn’t help that different vendors used their own proprietary name for their Miracast feature - most users have no clue what Miracast is.)
rodgerd 7y ago
Apple never adopted it, which meant that you had Windows + Android able to use Miracast, but iOS not; AirPlay couldn't be used by the other side of the fence. DLNA could, in theory, be all things to all people, but like similar "all things" it's such a pain in the arse to get renderers and servers all talking to each other it never really "just works". Of course, all of that wouldn't necessarily be a problem except that Apple and Google are deeply invested in non-compatibility.
- Angostura 7y ago
  There are quite a few TV manufacturers building in Airplay now.
- GeekyBear 7y ago
  Apple already had it's own standard in place before Miracast was created. The audio only version of AirPlay (AirTunes) goes back a decade before Miracast, and the version that also supports video predates Miracast by two years. It would be nice to be able to add an iOS plugin to add system wide support for Miracast instead of just having some apps choose to support it.

zamadatix 7y ago

Miracast for the first two, not sure what you mean by reusing Wi-Fi but the various forms of what that can mean are pretty well covered as well (Wi-Fi Direct, adhoc, hotspot). The WiGig alliance (later with the Wi-Fi alliance) also have tons of standard protocols for sharing just about anything over 60 GHz Wi-Fi.

BoorishBears 7y ago
I recently got a Miracast dongle and it was a pretty bad experience. My PC would show corrupted video streams, my iPhone worked via an included app but lacked any sort of context awareness (just blindly mirrors the screen) and doesn’t work well with DRM I finally caved in after all these years and got an Apple TV and it’s so much nicer of an experience, even looking strictly at mirroring. Apps are context aware to the fact they’re mirroring, much lower latency from my PC (despite using a 3rd party app), no weird dependency on WiFi for initial pairing (Window's native mirroring won’t work with my Miracast device because my PC doesn’t have a WiFi card installed) I don’t know if it’s an ecosystem problem for Miracast (I’m pretty sure the only “high quality” implementation of it is the Microsoft adapter, but there’s an ocean of dongles that “support it”) or a technological limitation, but it wasn’t good

remir 7y ago

It is indeed quite frustrating. I can print from my phone without installing any app and it's awesome, but I wish I could do the same with sharing photos/videos on TVs.

pests 7y ago
Not for much longer https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-is-killing-google-cloud-print/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-is-killing-go...
- est31 7y ago
  Google cloud print is not the only way to print from Android. Since 8.0 Oreo, Android supports printing via IPP, which a growing number of printers support. So at least in the printing domain, open standards are winning.

pjc50 7y ago

Arguably we have too many. Everything from Bluetooth to Airdrop to Miracast to DLNA. What we don't have is authentication, and that's what Google have delivered in the Chromecast; binding it to a Google Home account to do all the single-sign-on stuff. (At one point open bluetooth was a thing, immediately exploited to drop dick pics to random strangers on public transport)

fenwick67 7y ago
Literally anyone on my wifi can cast to my Chromecast, not sure what you're on about. The only thing being authenticated does is allows me to set the timezone, change the background art, and re-name it, which are all secondary features I don't need.
- Smoosh 7y ago
  Being authenticated also allows Google to track your media consumption.
notyourday 7y ago
Huh? Given a box being able to reach Chromecast via standard IP routing and Chromecast being able to reach the box via a standard IP routing and a box being able to spinup a HTTP(s) sever one can cast to Chromecast. No need to be on a same network. Catt does it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sbr464 7y ago

Not sure what they used, but they had it on all 4 seasons of The Expanse. We should ask them. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/8ty16z/a_technology_that_needs_to_be_fast_tracked_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/8ty16z/a_techno...

robbiep 7y ago
We’ve got a couple hundred years to nail down the details

swiley 7y ago

X11 does this pretty easily for images, I’ve left raspis with X11 open to my personal network for this. Video won’t work well obviously. Lots of people dislike X11 and even more dislike the naked protocol.