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Some readers may remember my previous gripes about the Google ChromeCast for Android, and its halfway-there functionality, which allowed individual Android apps to stream to an HDMI-capable monitor or TV, but not screen mirroring. Well, finally with the latest update for the Android ChromeCast app, this has been implemented – for my Nexus 2012 anyway. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.

The 1.9.6 version of the app requires Android 2.3 or above on a device for basic functionality, but for screem mirroring, Android 4.4.2 KitKat or above is needed. Scren casting is available as an option from the pull-down menu in the app, and is clearly labeled as a beta feature, no surprise as it does have some issues which hopefully will be ironed out in time. For one thing, even over a short distance on a home wifi network, it’s fairly slow, although sound also mirrors to the big screen, and the app comes with tips to optimize your wifi network for streaming.

And as you can see, it worked on my setup. However, ChromeCast also caused a device freeze on exiting, requiring a reboot. Whether this happens every time remains to be seen, but it obviously still has some bugs to be ironed out.

1 COMMENT

  1. With ChromeCast, you’re sending the screen data to the router which then sends it to the ChromeCast receiver — two transmissions, both (usually) in the same channel. An alternative is EZCast, which uses WiFi Direct to send the screen data directly to the EZCast receiver, bypassing the router. This is (obviously?) going to be faster in most cases.

    EZCast does require an EZCast receiver — it doesn’t work with ChromeCast — and it also requires that the Android device supports Miracast. It’s also, to be candid, sort-of “beta” quality at this point.

    Another way to at least reduce the WiFi bandwidth contention with ChromeCast is to use a dual-band router, and send from the device to the router on 5 GHz and from the router to ChromeCast receiver on 2.4 GHz.

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