They intentionally block casting from your Pixel phone to a TV, unless you use Chromecast. Google is terrible when it comes to casting.
Also disabled DisplayPort over USB-C on all Pixel phones to force you to buy a Chromecast.
Which really fucked me over last month when my Pixel 7 Pro’s screen died and I had no way of accessing the phone’s data, since I hadn’t allowed developer mode on any of my PCs yet
On the one hand, they should’ve kept WiDi/Miracast in Android. It’s included in almost every non-Google Android.
On the other hand, every other brand still includes it, and if you buy a Pixel, you probably either own something with a Chromecast in it or you run a custom ROM anyway. It’s pretty terrible in my experience. Audio desync issues, several seconds of latency, the connection drops out every now and then, and every TV has their own magical recipe for allowing your phone to cast to them (so far I’ve seen popups, a pairing menu, and a special button you need to press before you can even start).
Samsung has their own proprietary extensions on top of Miracast/WiDi that make most devices list their TVs as compatible, but I’ve never seen a non-Samsung phone pair and cast successfully. Then there is the fact most phones just mirror the contents of the screen, leading to massive black bars around content.
Chromecast fixes all of the practical problems by a) not dealing with authentication at all beyond “should be on the same network” and b) running the applications on the Chromecast itself rather than making the phone transmit high-bandwidth video over WiFi Direct. I don’t know how AirPlay does it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it uses the same concept.
Mildly off topic but years ago I bought a cheap Microsoft Miracast receiver. Tried using it some dozen times with various phones and with my PC and it never worked. HOWEVER this month I got a new phone and NOW it works with that phone, lol (the device itself hasn’t been updated, and both my current and previous phones are Sony). Guessing it’s some compatibility thing in the Linux drivers shipped on the phone. But weird that no other device of mine has been able to cast to it before, including some Windows computers.
What we need is a Miracast 2 which does the Chromecast thing of offering a remote controlled browser engine, but open.
I have a TV with Android TV and casting stopped working, and found out Google requires signing into the TV with an account now? I didn’t feel like doing that so started using airplay which TV supports too.
That would be pretty neat. But I think they should get connected calling and messaging between phone and tablet in there. Apple does it, Samsung does it, the web app doesn’t cut it.
Edit: and immediately after posting this, I found this
I would think this would be a huge boon for reverse engineers to potentially come up with a self hosted cast compatible interface. Much more opportunity for looking under the hood in this configuration.
This has already been done over wireless ADB and more if you just want mirroring. For content aware casting we essentially just have DLNA derivatives and nothing better.
