How to use Cast

[kashif 350]

I have been trying to use Cast option in the dropdown drawer but not sure how it works.

Can someone explain how to make it work to cast to any tv please?

So basically after enabling Cast option, what else is needed? Chromecast dongle? and an app?

Maybe if someone can explain all the requirements and step by step guide to setup

Thanks

[netman 1,424]

I've done this with my TV and it was confusing as heck... You need definitely some device that supports chromecast or miracast or whatever (I don't even know which one my TV does), in my case I have a "smart" TV that runs LG WebOS and in the menu i have stuff to enable casting, and then i selected direct cast and when I did that it showed up after pressing the cast thing on the phone, in a small dialog on the phone. And selecting that did nothing. And then I did it again a few times and it started to work xD. I could also tell the TV to do it over the network (it's connected with ethernet cable) but that was slow and bad, somewhere it had setting to tell it to connect to the phone directly by wifi.

If your TV is also WebOS I can take a look and re-do the pairing so I can instruct correctly. It seemed all pretty quirky to me, but now that the phone and TV know eachother I just turn it on and the TV shows Pro1s display, sometimes needs 2 tries, but then works surprisingly well.

[kashif 350]

4 minutes ago, netman said:

I've done this with my TV and it was confusing as heck... You need definitely some device that supports chromecast or miracast or whatever (I don't even know which one my TV does), in my case I have a "smart" TV that runs LG WebOS and in the menu i have stuff to enable casting, and then i selected direct cast and when I did that it showed up after pressing the cast thing on the phone, in a small dialog on the phone. And selecting that did nothing. And then I did it again a few times and it started to work xD. I could also tell the TV to do it over the network (it's connected with ethernet cable) but that was slow and bad, somewhere it had setting to tell it to connect to the phone directly by wifi.

If your TV is also WebOS I can take a look and re-do the pairing so I can instruct correctly. It seemed all pretty quirky to me, but now that the phone and TV know eachother I just turn it on and the TV shows Pro1s display, sometimes needs 2 tries, but then works surprisingly well.

Mine is not a smart tv i think.

But if i buy chromecast dongle, do you know how to setup with it?

or anyone else here have used chromecast?

[netman 1,424]

Just now, kashif said:

Mine is not a smart tv i think.

But if i buy chromecast dongle, do you know how to setup with it?

or anyone else here have used chromecast?

I don't even know if chromecast works for this, as last i remember hearing about it is that it'll only cast things like youtube... There have to exist devices that support this though, I've been surprised before though how little info there is to find about using these things.

[kashif 350]

Just now, netman said:

I don't even know if chromecast works for this, as last i remember hearing about it is that it'll only cast things like youtube... There have to exist devices that support this though, I've been surprised before though how little info there is to find about using these things.

Yes its very confusing and i havent worked out yet.

I have noticed that in a shopping center i by mistake taped cast and it just showed me available devices to connect, thats wired to me. i guess there were some smart tvs there?

[netman 1,424]

5 minutes ago, kashif said:

I have noticed that in a shopping center i by mistake taped cast and it just showed me available devices to connect, thats wired to me. i guess there were some smart tvs there?

Yeah they broadcast via wifi, even when you're not connected to any wifi there is some mechanism to connect via wifi to them without going trough a network. Please do tell if you find some generic documentation about this subject ^^.

[david 929]

17 hours ago, kashif said:

Mine is not a smart tv i think.

But if i buy chromecast dongle, do you know how to setup with it?

or anyone else here have used chromecast?

Should work fine with chromecast.  I have some devices I can test on if you would like.  Any app that supports casting should work fine.  The phone tells the device where to get the content and the device connects to that url directly.  In other words, the data doesn't flow through the phone to the device.  The phone is then used like a remote control.  Unlike mirroring, you can use other apps while the video is playing on the device/TV.

I have never done a wifi direct connection like netman, except that is required at first, to set up chromecast.  You use the Google home app to set up the device and tell it which wifi access point to use, give it the password, etc. Then it will switch to communicating over the LAN to talk to the phone and to access the internet.

@netman, are you mirroring your screen or casting app content?

Edited February 19, 2020 by david

[netman 1,424]

19 minutes ago, david said:

@netman, are you mirroring your screen or casting app content?

Mirroring the whole screen, youtube claims it can cast itself specially but that's never worked on my tv (with other phones also).

[Hook 3,043]

I have an LG smart TV with WebOS, but I cast through my Roku box (probably Chromecast works similarly).  When I look for devices to cast to, the Roku box just shows up (in fact, mt TV doesn't, but I don't think I ever set anything up on it for casting).  So my very uneducated guess is that anything that is on the same network as the phone and provides streaming service to the TV will work.  I only cast from one source and that apps built in casting capability works flawlessly.  I have no need to cast Netflix or YouTube or stuff like that-- they are already provided by the Roku box.

Edited February 18, 2020 by Hook

[michael.bosscha 142]

So what happens is either of two things:

1) You mirror the screen of your phone onto a TV screen;
2) You tell an app with Castability to go and load something onto the screen.

The first drains your battery. The second doesn't, because after it gives the command, that's it. Your phone now works like a remote control, nothing else.

But for all this to work, your TV needs to either have a built-in Chromecast (most smart TVs nowadays do) or a Chromecast dongle, which you put in a free HDMI port. In both cases, you need to have a wifi network set up and running. After plugging in the dongle, it will run a setup on-screen for you to follow. You will need Google Home though.

Does this help?

[Rob. S. 1,664]

11 hours ago, kashif said:

Mine is not a smart tv i think.

But if i buy chromecast dongle, do you know how to setup with it?

or anyone else here have used chromecast?

Yes, I'm using one of the tiny, first-generation Chromecast dongles for most of what I watch on the living room TV, and it has been such a decent experience over the years that I'm not even inclined to upgrade it. Android connects easily to those devices, and I either use my phone* or a tablet to operate the dongle, or sometimes the (Vivaldi or Chromium) browser on my Linux laptop. As others said, depending on whether you cast the smartphone's screen or use a cast-enabled app, the smartphone either streams its screen content to the Chromecast dongle over WiFi, or the app tells the Chromecast dongle what to do and where to get the content. I mostly found the latter to work better. It has the disadvantage, though, that any VPNs you might be using on your Android device  are not known to the dongle and will not be used; if you want to use Chromecast via VPN, you need to use a VPN-enabled router.

* Which is not the Pro¹ yet – just for the record...

Edited February 18, 2020 by Rob. S.

[david 929]

I did some testing today.  Here are the details and results:

NOTE:  You will have fewer problems if you have your streaming/display device and your phone on the same wireless access point.

NOTE:  A reminder that your best setting on your TV, where you can set aspect ratio, is probably "screen fit", if you have that option, rather than 16:9.  16:9 will often cut off a little bit on the right and left side in order to fill the screen vertically.  If your TV's native resolution is a 16:9 aspect ratio, this will mean that you'll get black bars on the top and bottom, but you'll be seeing the full thing instead of missing some bits.  Some might prefer losing bits and pieces and seeing a slightly fuzzier, zoomed in video, so it is obviously up to you what you prefer.  It has no bearing on the mirroring and casting, other than, when mirroring the Pro1's screen, you might miss some UI elements on the sides.  You'll still see them on your phone screen.

Definitions:  

- Casting = Controlling the display device with your phone.  The content is pulled from the display device, over the internet, not through your phone.  DIAL (sort of) and google cast are two examples of this.

- Mirroring = Seeing the same thing on the display device as you see on your phone.  The phone pulls content (from local storage or the internet) and sends that content to the display device.  This is a big battery drain, so if you are doing a lot of this, you might want to plug in your phone.  Miracast is an example of this, although google cast does have a screen mirroring option too, which might be confusing sometimes.

Testing:

- I tested with a Roku and with a Chromecast enabled (built-in) Vizio TV.

- I tested with YouTube, Netflix and CBS apps, as well as system level screen mirroring.

- In order to see non-google cast capable devices, go into the system level casting screen on the Pro1, tap SETTINGS, tape the 3 vertical dots in the upper right corner, and enable "Enable wireless display".  If you don't do this, you won't see miracast capable devices.

- With the Roku, turning on casting at the system level in the Pro1 allowed screen mirroring.  This is done through the miracast protocol.  The results had video compression artifacts visible on the TV screen and would sometimes hit glitches where something maybe couldn't keep up.  This was when playing videos on the phone.  Normal navigation in android looked fine.  And the video was watchable, but just not perfect quality.  When in this mode, a notification will show at the top of the phone screen.  This is a service provided by Qualcomm.  It will show as wfd.  That stands for wifi direct.  That means the phone is talking directly to the Roku, not going through the LAN network.  

- With the Roku, using the YouTube and Netflix app on the phone, you can also pick casting from within those apps.  This uses the DIAL protocol.  YouTube and Netflix jointly developed this protocol years ago.  In this mode, the Roku will go out and get the content and the phone will act as a remote control, where you can pause, fast forward, etc.  This is *not* the google cast technology (what used to be called chromecast, but is now just the name of the product), but it functions similarly.  You *must* have YouTube and Netflix installed on the streaming device for this to work.

The CBS app only does google cast, so hitting the casting button in that app will only show google cast devices, not miracast devices.  Therefore, there is no way to do true casting from within the CBS app to Roku.  You can do system level screen mirroring and then play the videos on the phone, in the CBS app, and see them on both screens.

- With the Chromecast enabled TV, turning on casting at the system level in the Pro1 allowed screen mirroring.  This is not miracast.  This goes over your LAN, I believe, not using wifi direct.  Chromecast does have a mechanism for guest access that uses some sort of wifi direct communication, but I didn't test that.  I was not using the Google Home app for any of this testing.  The quality of doing screen mirroring with Chromecast is better than doing the same with miracast (at least on the Roku), when playing videos.

NOTE:  I don't have all the variables nailed down, but switching from screen mirroring to true google casting (either direction, I believe), most times caused the Pro1 to reboot.  I've reported the bug and will update the details after I do more testing.

- With the Chromecast enabled TV, YouTube and CBS can do true google casting.  Netflix can't do anything, which is interesting.  The internet is full of people who have had this problem.  It is possible that by changing some variables I will be able to get it to work.  I'll play with it some other time.  The main thing about Chromecast/google cast is that you don't need the apps to be installed on the display/streaming device.  It also allows you to use your phone while watching something on the TV, because what is displayed on your phone isn't displayed on the TV.  You can search for new content at the same time as well, without affecting what is being shown on the TV. 

Because you don't need to have the apps installed on the display/streaming device, you'll find many more apps that can cast within the app, using google cast, than you will apps that can do DIAL.  It is a relatively easy way for a content provider to make their content available on mobile devices and display/streaming devices at the same time.

 

That's it for this round of testing.

I'm biased against mirroring.  The quality isn't as good and you can't use your phone while you (or others) are watching the content. 

Having said that, overall, I like Rokus for streaming better than the chromecast devices/TVs (not doing casting or mirroring).  They just seem to work better, especially on low bandwidth connections.  The only downside is that you can't type in searches easily using the supplied remote control.   There is an app, and it has a keyboard option, but it is kind of clunky.  At least it was on my Relay 4G.  I haven't tried it on the Pro1 yet.  The Roku models with voice search built into the remote controls are very slick.  It has a pretty good search function and you can launch the various apps fairly easily with it.  If you have a google home device, you can also link them together and control the Roku through the google home.

But if you wan to do true casting, a Chromecast dongle is a cheap investment and will work with a lot of streaming apps.  

If you really want to do mirroring, then there are cheap miracast devices you can buy.  However, you can do screen mirroring with Chromecast too, so keep that in mind.  If you go with the Chromecast, you'll get casting and mirroring in one device.

And if your TV has enough HDMI inputs, there is no technical reason you can't have a Chromecast and a Roku plugged into it at the same time.  That's just a matter of money at that point.

[david 929]

8 hours ago, michael.bosscha said:

You will need Google Home though.

The built in casting on the Pro1 seems to speak google cast to a Chromecast device and you can cast from within google cast enabled apps too, without using Google Home.  Of course, for a true Chromecast dongle, you need the Google Home app to set it up.  For a Chromecast enabled (built-in) TV, you don't, since you have a remote control to enter the details into the TV network configuration screen.

[kashif 350]

Ok so i just bought google chromecast today and tested it with Pro1. it was pretty easy and quick and it works fine.

so here is how i set it up:

connect chromecast to hmdi port of any monitor or tv

connect micro usb to chromecast usb port for power

in few seconds it will show chromecast screen on the tv or monitor

now download Google home app from play to any phone in order to setup your chromecast. i installed it on my Note8. then run Google home app and setup chromecast to your wifi, its pretty straight forward, it will detect your chromecast device and just fill in the info asked. after setup is complete then its all setup.

now on pro1 you dont need to install any app, in quick app drawer first enable wifi and then enable Cast.

it will detect your chromecast device. click on it and it will start mirroring your phone to the tv or monitor

to turn off just disable cast in pro1.

 

so it works pretty well playing movies are fine with both video and audio. you can also just cast youtube in the youtube app.

it did once disconnected and i had to connect again.

the other thing is that i bought the normal chromecast, not the 4k version. so the resolution is not the very best. i guess if you buy 4k version then it will be better. i will prolly buy 4k version later.

so the cast option in pro1 is very handy to use it.

[Hook 3,043]

13 hours ago, david said:

I did some testing today.  Here are the details and results:

NOTE:  You will have fewer problems if you have your streaming/display device and your phone on the same wireless access point.

NOTE:  A reminder that your best setting on your TV, where you can set aspect ratio, is probably "screen fit", if you have that option, rather than 16:9.  16:9 will often cut off a little bit on the right and left side in order to fill the screen vertically.  If your TV's native resolution is a 16:9 aspect ratio, this will mean that you'll get black bars on the top and bottom, but you'll be seeing the full thing instead of missing some bits.  Some might prefer losing bits and pieces and seeing a slightly fuzzier, zoomed in video, so it is obviously up to you what you prefer.  It has no bearing on the mirroring and casting, other than, when mirroring the Pro1's screen, you might miss some UI elements on the sides.  You'll still see them on your phone screen.

Definitions:  

- Casting = Controlling the display device with your phone.  The content is pulled from the display device, over the internet, not through your phone.  DIAL (sort of) and google cast are two examples of this.

- Mirroring = Seeing the same thing on the display device as you see on your phone.  The phone pulls content (from local storage or the internet) and sends that content to the display device.  This is a big battery drain, so if you are doing a lot of this, you might want to plug in your phone.  Miracast is an example of this, although google cast does have a screen mirroring option too, which might be confusing sometimes.

Testing:

- I tested with a Roku and with a Chromecast enabled (built-in) Vizio TV.

- I tested with YouTube, Netflix and CBS apps, as well as system level screen mirroring.

- In order to see non-google cast capable devices, go into the system level casting screen on the Pro1, tap SETTINGS, tape the 3 vertical dots in the upper right corner, and enable "Enable wireless display".  If you don't do this, you won't see miracast capable devices.

- With the Roku, turning on casting at the system level in the Pro1 allowed screen mirroring.  This is done through the miracast protocol.  The results had video compression artifacts visible on the TV screen and would sometimes hit glitches where something maybe couldn't keep up.  This was when playing videos on the phone.  Normal navigation in android looked fine.  And the video was watchable, but just not perfect quality.  When in this mode, a notification will show at the top of the phone screen.  This is a service provided by Qualcomm.  It will show as wfd.  That stands for wifi direct.  That means the phone is talking directly to the Roku, not going through the LAN network.  

- With the Roku, using the YouTube and Netflix app on the phone, you can also pick casting from within those apps.  This uses the DIAL protocol.  YouTube and Netflix jointly developed this protocol years ago.  In this mode, the Roku will go out and get the content and the phone will act as a remote control, where you can pause, fast forward, etc.  This is *not* the google cast technology (what used to be called chromecast, but is now just the name of the product), but it functions similarly.  You *must* have YouTube and Netflix installed on the streaming device for this to work.

The CBS app only does google cast, so hitting the casting button in that app will only show google cast devices, not miracast devices.  Therefore, there is no way to do true casting from within the CBS app to Roku.  You can do system level screen mirroring and then play the videos on the phone, in the CBS app, and see them on both screens.

- With the Chromecast enabled TV, turning on casting at the system level in the Pro1 allowed screen mirroring.  This is not miracast.  This goes over your LAN, I believe, not using wifi direct.  Chromecast does have a mechanism for guest access that uses some sort of wifi direct communication, but I didn't test that.  I was not using the Google Home app for any of this testing.  The quality of doing screen mirroring with Chromecast is better than doing the same with miracast (at least on the Roku), when playing videos.

NOTE:  I don't have all the variables nailed down, but switching from screen mirroring to true google casting (either direction, I believe), most times caused the Pro1 to reboot.  I've reported the bug and will update the details after I do more testing.

- With the Chromecast enabled TV, YouTube and CBS can do true google casting.  Netflix can't do anything, which is interesting.  The internet is full of people who have had this problem.  It is possible that by changing some variables I will be able to get it to work.  I'll play with it some other time.  The main thing about Chromecast/google cast is that you don't need the apps to be installed on the display/streaming device.  It also allows you to use your phone while watching something on the TV, because what is displayed on your phone isn't displayed on the TV.  You can search for new content at the same time as well, without affecting what is being shown on the TV. 

Because you don't need to have the apps installed on the display/streaming device, you'll find many more apps that can cast within the app, using google cast, than you will apps that can do DIAL.  It is a relatively easy way for a content provider to make their content available on mobile devices and display/streaming devices at the same time.

 

That's it for this round of testing.

I'm biased against mirroring.  The quality isn't as good and you can't use your phone while you (or others) are watching the content. 

Having said that, overall, I like Rokus for streaming better than the chromecast devices/TVs (not doing casting or mirroring).  They just seem to work better, especially on low bandwidth connections.  The only downside is that you can't type in searches easily using the supplied remote control.   There is an app, and it has a keyboard option, but it is kind of clunky.  At least it was on my Relay 4G.  I haven't tried it on the Pro1 yet.  The Roku models with voice search built into the remote controls are very slick.  It has a pretty good search function and you can launch the various apps fairly easily with it.  If you have a google home device, you can also link them together and control the Roku through the google home.

But if you wan to do true casting, a Chromecast dongle is a cheap investment and will work with a lot of streaming apps.  

If you really want to do mirroring, then there are cheap miracast devices you can buy.  However, you can do screen mirroring with Chromecast too, so keep that in mind.  If you go with the Chromecast, you'll get casting and mirroring in one device.

And if your TV has enough HDMI inputs, there is no technical reason you can't have a Chromecast and a Roku plugged into it at the same time.  That's just a matter of money at that point.

The only thing I can't quite figure out in your test setup is, if you have Netflix, CBS or YouTube. a Roku box and a big TV, why you would ever be casting them from the phone. 😉 

 

[david 929]

13 minutes ago, Hook said:

The only thing I can't quite figure out in your test setup is, if you have Netflix, CBS or YouTube. a Roku box and a big TV, why you would ever be casting them from the phone. 😉 

 

LOL  Good point!  

It was 2 different TVs.

But your point stands.  The Roku equipped TV has all the apps I would need/want, because Roku is the top streaming device, and is independent (no Google vs Amazon wars), everyone makes apps for it.  The only reason for mirroring to it would be to show the screen or play a game or display some obscure streaming app content that doesn't have a Roku app.  Or if there was some bug in the app on the Roku.  It would also work for displaying videos or photos that exist in the phone, or the phone can access them, but the Roku can't.

As for the Chromecast TV, it does have some built in apps aside from the Chromecast capability.  But it does not have all the apps that a Roku does.  But many streaming apps on Android should be able to speak google cast, to make up for that.  I have had cases where the built in apps would not play certain videos (Amazon Prime Video, for instance).  I plugged in the Roku temporarily, because I didn't have my Pro1 yet.  If that were to happen now, I could cast or mirror with my Pro1.

As an aside, that TV also supports the Apple airplay technology.  I don't have a single apple product in my house, but for others who do or have a mixed set of technology, I figured I would mention it.

I could see this functionality being useful when at a hotel or in an office or at another person's house, where options are limited.   It just provides another way to watch something on the bigger screens.

The real reason I did the testing was to see what was possible.  And, as it turned out, I found a bug that causes the phone to reboot often, so that is worthwhile to report and get fixed.

Back when I first heard about Chromecasts, I thought they would be the ideal streaming solution.  Searching by using arrow keys on a traditional remote, to navigate a virtual keyboard on a TV is horrible.  Searching on a virtual or physical keyboard on a phone is MUCH better.  However, searching for something generally implies that you know what you want to watch ahead of time.  Often, it is more common to browse through content to find something.  The traditional remote control and the Roku apps make that fairly easy, so the advantage of searching with the phone is minimized.  Others can see the browsing when on the TV screen too, so it works better when it is a 2 or more person activity (finding something to watch).

Each method has its pros and cons.  It is good that we have options. 😊