4 ms·

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.

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.