For instance, it’s impossible to stream content from recent Amazon tablets to Fire TV’s unless you hack some sort of DYI solution.
Returned mine pretty quickly. By comparison my 5 years old Apple TV works like a charm.
For now, Google v Amazon a fight between two anticompetitive proprietary systems, neither of which should be supported by any consumer.
I’m not talking about the open cast standard, which Amazon spearheaded (and Roku and many apps support), I’m talking about the actual Chromecast protocol, which according to Google, you are not allowed to reverse or implement receivers for.
From what I understand it's using DIAL which was developed by Netflix and YouTube. Chromecast devices have changed to using mDNS now, but the clients still seem to support both.
https://www.howtogeek.com/214943/how-to-use-your-roku-like-a...
- DIAL - Chromecast use to support DIAL and it's still supported by the YouTube app and Netflix. Chrome also supports DIAL from computers.
-Miracast - both Android and Windows support it for screen mirroring.
So all of this time I thought it was the "Chromecast" protocol it's actually two other protocols that do the same thing(?)
Once upon a time, you could use the Netflix app on a Kindle to stream to a FireTV or a Chromecast, or the Netflix app from Android to stream to Chromecast or FireTV.
Google has been fucking with the protocols to prevent that for a while, and it caused lots of trouble for open source devs (and Amazon).
If you are in the Android ecosystem, you get a device like the Nvidia Shield that does support Chromecast and Amazon Prime and native apps. On top of that, you get a stand-alone Plex Server that supports transcoding.
If you don’t care about Chromecast support and you own an Android device and you want something cheap, get something on the Roku platform and you get most of the same benefits of a Chromecast and every streaming platform supports the Roku.
So why fool with either the Amazon Fire Stick or Chromecast?
When the 9 year old computer that I’m using as a Plex server gives out on me, I’m thinking about just getting a Shield to replace it.
Because I want to receive streams with my own software, and I want to stream from all kinds of devices.
Having many competing standards sucks.
A common use case is that I play a game and want to stream it, but also want to have music in background, and control that from my phone.
So currently I use YouTube TV mode in a browser elemnent integrated into OBS as audio-only stream, with the youtube app’s cast mode to control it.
But obviously I’d like to make this nicer.
And I also want to stream music to my raspberry pi, so it can play it on my sound system (which is dumb speakers with custom amp and setup)
Chromecast, the protocol, could – if Google wasn’t banning developers from using it.
It doesn’t support Miracast, and recent Android phones have removed Miracast support.
Ughhh