Soon you may be able to mirror what’s on your Android smartphone or tablet to your television through Chromecast.
Google’s Chromecast television streaming dongle has become a bit of a cult hit. At $35, it is one of the cheapest over-the-top media streamers on the market, can connect to virtually any television and allows you to use your smartphone or a tablet as a remote. The problem the Chromecast has had in its seven months or so of existence is lack of depth for apps that can use it.
Cyanogen developer Koushik Dutta—the developer of the popular AllCast app—has figured out how to hack the Chromecast to be able to mirror what’s on your Android device to your television. He posted a short demo video on his Google+ profile on Sunday showing him playing Flappy Bird and using Twitter on his phone while also casting it to his television.
There appears to be a lag in the video and Google does not officially support device screen mirroring for Chromecast at this point, but the capabilities may soon come to Google’s popular dongle.
In a post to his Google+ profile today, Dutta notes that Google may be working on screen mirroring for the Chromecast from Android, but that it’s not yet ready. Dutta speculates that Google may be about to add a protocol to the Chromecast firmware to allow screen mirroring, and notes that it looks like Google is not using WebRTC, can’t package and stream MP4 videos without buffering, can’t stream H264 or VP8 and that mirroring frame by frame is slow.
Dutta says:
Did some poking around to see how far along Google is with their Chromecast mirroring solution. There’s plenty of evidence that there’s some (possibly half baked) solution in the Play Services APK and it is not totally disabled. This is why people are seeing their “Cast” quick setting tile sometimes light up.
