Chromecast

[sub]

Having had a quick read on the topic, I guess it'd mean showing and interacting with the UI on a phone/tablet, and then using chromecast for video playback? ie, a glorified remote, with playback happening on the TV?

[mvallevand]

If you can cast images a touch UI might work, but I don't think it supports broadcast ts, just mp4 and mpeg-dash

Martin

[sub]

From what I've read, mpeg-dash normally carries transport stream, like HLS, so there possibilities.

[bgowland]

Having had a quick read on the topic, I guess it'd mean showing and interacting with the UI on a phone/tablet, and then using chromecast for video playback? ie, a glorified remote, with playback happening on the TV?

Yep, that's the kind of Idea I've got. Basically what you see on your laptop / phone / tablet is redirected (shared in a sense) with the Chromecast device and displayed on the TV (or anything with an HDMI adapter - a PC monitor would also work).

The Chromecast doesn't have any traditional remote or keyboard / mouse so everything is controlled by the Sender app - as you say, a glorified remote. There is plenty of example code out there but until I get my registration confirmation I won't be able to experiment.

I'm winding up my work stuff at the moment so will go and see what it can do "out of the box" to get a basic feel.

[bgowland]

A couple of basic tests...

The YouTube app on my Nexus 7 has a "cast" icon at the top of the player window. If I opt to "cast" then YouTube starts on my TV and plays the selected video. The YouTube app on my Nexus stops playing and pops up a message saying it's being cast to my Chromecast but I can use it as a remote and pause / restart playback on my TV (I didn't try seeking).

The Google Music app (Google's attempt at iTunes) also has a "cast" icon. If I select it, a music player app appears on my TV but unfortunately I've never purchased any music from Google Play and even though it gives an option (in the app on my Nexus) to play music from my device, it refuses and says it can't stream "side-loaded" music. I'm guessing they use some form of DRM to identify whether or not the music track was purchased from them or not.

I still don't really understand how the damn thing works so I'll just have to wait until I'm able to hack around with some development tools.

Cheers,
Brian

[UncleJohnsBand]

Thanks for the update.

[bgowland]

Well mixed feelings so far. The docs for Chromcast development are OK but it's still in preview so obviously not yet complete. The so-called Chromcast Community page just says to go to StackOverflow and use the chromecast tag.

I'm still waiting on the white-list confirmation - the request acknowledgement suggest 48 hours but I've read it's more like 4-5 business days.

I've learned a few things though - the "cast" icon in the Android Youtube and other Google apps only appears on screen when the Chromecast is powered on. It basically uses DIAL to find and announce itself to apps which are cast-enabled.

You don't actually cast an Android (or iOS) app to it, as it only works with HTML/JS/CSS so if you want the app to appear on the TV you need to write a "look-alike" web page (or pages). I probably wouldn't do this for nDroid - if I'm using nDroid in my living room on my Nexus 7 I'd really only want it to cast media content for playback on the TV

Based on the above, the Touch interface still seems it may be viable although it would require both the client (tablet for example) and the CHromecast receiving the same UI updates.

Streaming options are a little less clear - in particular for .ts files. Although mpeg-dash supports both MPEG-4 and MPEG2 TS, the docs simply mention mpeg-dash and don't specify which have been implemented (one or other or both). There's a question about support for TS on StackOverflow but it's a month old and the only answer was speculative rather than definitive - I posted a bounty on the question to see if I can get a definitive response from someone. If it does support TS then the npvr web server would need to chunk the broadcast ts files to work with mpeg-dash.

Well that's about it so far - I doubt I'll get white-listed over the weekend so I'll hang on until next week.

Cheers,
Brian

[bgowland]

lol - I've just received an email from nobody@google...

My Chromecast has been white-listed for development purposes so I'll start playing around with nDroid integration. I'd already made progress with device discovery before it was white-listed and can detect the Chromecast when it's online (which is a good start). Not sure how long it'll take to get anything up and running though.

Cheers,
Brian

[mvallevand]

Brian that sounds exciting. I know this a long way away perhaps when you "finish" nDroid but this is what I am wishing for now is an Android or Chrome browser remote that will connect to a running instance of NextPVR (new experimental feature) and allow me to cast what I watching on the laptop to the big screen to show my wife.

Martin

[bgowland]

Brian that sounds exciting.

Yep, although I suspect I'll be starting with the sample code for Tic-Tac-Toe - well it beats a "Hello World" app at least.

I know this a long way away perhaps when you "finish" nDroid but this is what I am wishing for now is an Android or Chrome browser remote that will connect to a running instance of NextPVR (new experimental feature) and allow me to cast what I watching on the laptop to the big screen to show my wife.

I'm not sure if nDroid will ever be finished but I'll be playing around with npvr either nDroid and/or Touch.

It's still not clear to me what streaming options will work - the question on StackOverflow hasn't been answered yet WRT mpeg2-ts support in mpeg-dash despite me setting a bounty and prodding one of the Google devs for an answer.

At least I now have access to full SDK updates and the Chromecast dev group so I'll be able to find out more.

I have to admit using the Nexus 7 as a YouTube "remote" is quite impressive. It would certainly be good if it can be done for npvr.

Cheers,
Brian