Hacker News Reader

Isn't AirPlay pretty much analogous? Only available on a single brand of devices with an effectively DRM protected closed protocol?

View on HN

I don't quite think so. AirPlay is a proprietary Miracast, long before Miracast existed. Although it's proprietary and the payload is protected with DRM, Apple uses it as an encrypted tunnel between approved (and first-party) devices.

Meanwhile, Google Cast is a media-streaming negotiation, handoff and control protocol marketed as a wireless streaming solution. It's not so much about packets on the wire as control commands and metadata. That, I feel, is a significant difference.

You can cast your desktop using Chrome cast. I'm pretty sure that's more than negotiation, handoff and control.

I don't think that's actually part of the Cast protocol. Google just built a desktop streaming app on top of the Cast protocol, and bundled it with the client.

Chromecast is available on iOS and the web, not just Android, ie any third-party iOS developer - not just Google - can support Chromecast.

So platform support is more widespread, though your main point is valid insofar as Google determines which platforms it works on.

but still so many of applications that their version on android supports it, do not support it in their ios version e.g. soundcloud.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com