Just upgraded to a Win10 laptop, and would love to wirelessly send what’s on the screen (Netflix, etc), right to the TV. A few questions:
–there are numerous dongles out there to do this, from ~$20 to Microsoft’s ~$47 version. Is one any better than the other? Amazon’s ratings aren’t definitive.
–I read that MS Edge is designed to use miracast technology to do this. I refuse to use Microsoft’s browser. Will these dongles mirror ANYTHING that’s on my computer screen?
–Do these devices use wifi or Bluetooth technology? A teacher I know uses this technology in her classroom, and she says it’s done via Bluetooth, but my reading seems to indicate it’s wifi.
Any other advice would be appreciated. The CC community is always awesome!
I don’t know the first thing about the technology but I can cast YouTube to my TV by hitting the icon on my tablet. Never set anything up, it’s just there. Maybe because I have Google Fiber? For all I know I can cast other stuff but have never tried.
It depends on what exactly you want to do. If you literally want to mirror you browser, e.g. show your zappos shopping cart on the tv, Google Chromecast works well and there’s a free plug-in for Chrome (the web browser) to enable it. Amazon Fire stick needs an app and is a little more clunky IIRC.
If you want to play Netflix and watch YouTube, it’s better to run those natively through either your smart tv or some sort of dongle like Chromecast or Amazon Fire stick/tv. That is, there’s free native apps for those dongles so you don’t need your computer at all. The resolution/performance will be much better.
I’ve had both Chromecast and currently using Amazon Fire stick and they both work fine. If you have Amazon prime then I’d probably just go with Fire.
My S set up Chromecast for wireless casting and it seems to work.
Later on he added a Roku stick to our TV and we find that works better for streaming Netflix.
I use chromecast for mirroring my laptop. Good for showing photos or streaming movies from laptop.
I have a Roku 3 for watching netflix, amazon prime videos etc.
@cbreeze --does chromecast mirror everything, or just the Chrome browser? I recall that when Chromecast was new, one of the drawbacks was that it “preferred” google products.