GNOME Network Displays Adds Support For Chromecast & Miracast MICE Protocols

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNOME Network Displays Adds Support For Chromecast & Miracast MICE Protocols

GNOME Network Displays is the software that allows streaming your GNOME desktop to WiFi Display devices using PipeWire. Last week GNOME Network Displays 0.91 was released with some big improvements to this software...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Network-Displays-0.91

[cynic]

nice! does it work independently of the underlying infrastructure (Wayland/X11)?

[dc740]

I tested it on an "HP U27 4k Wireless". It didn't work

Turns out HP added an extra layer of "security" by making you connect through Bluetooth first, then entering a pin number you see on the screen, doing something in the background, and only then the monitor lets you connect wireless. So I was not able to make it work in Linux.

Off-topic review of this monitor:
The experience was even worst in Windows though (I borrowed an old laptop with it). You can't connect when wired to the LAN, because windows disables the wifi and the monitor disconnects. The connection kept dropping until I finally was able to upgrade the monitor firmware, which I couldn't do for a while because you need to be already connected to be able to upgrade, and the connection needs to be stable enough to finish uploading the (huge, 1GB) firmware.
The issue was largely gone after the firmware upgrade, but the picture quality was BAD. This is a 4k monitor, and the picture looked like 720p. Trying to connect through lan and using the wifi for the monitor was not possible (even though I tried every trick I could find to force windows to keep the wifi on). So even though I was able to make it work after A LOT of issues, the picture quality turned out to be sub-par and I dropped the idea of going wireless.

[juxuanu]

I think Chromecast was reversed engineered protocol. And iirc GSoC

[nadro]

I checked it and sadly doesn't work with Fire TV Stick 4K Max. I just see an error when I try to connect to Fire TV.

[pomac]

I think Chromecast was reversed engineered protocol. And iirc GSoC

Oh? Whats not included in:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/chromecast

[kruger]

It's a pity we don't have some universal open standard for wireless display. It's nice that Microsoft improves Miracast and provides some documentation but device support is limited now and everything moved to Google Cast and Apple AirPlay. Both are described as "proprietary" on Wikipedia so I wonder if the protocol is documented somwhere? And how did GNOME implement it then? Did they just use the Google provided SDK libraries?

The whole wireless display situation gives me headaches. Sony dropped Miracast support with their Android TVs in 2021 when they switched to Google TV. My Xiaomi phone supports both Miracast and Google Cast but they seem to promote Miracast because with Google Cast it displayed some performance related warning and it was laggy (maybe it's not accelerated). And Linux up to now only had some hacky Miracast expeeiments. Maybe now it will finally change.

[ehansin]

It's a pity we don't have some universal open standard for wireless display. It's nice that Microsoft improves Miracast and provides some documentation but device support is limited now and everything moved to Google Cast and Apple AirPlay. Both are described as "proprietary" on Wikipedia so I wonder if the protocol is documented somwhere? And how did GNOME implement it then? Did they just use the Google provided SDK libraries?

The whole wireless display situation gives me headaches. Sony dropped Miracast support with their Android TVs in 2021 when they switched to Google TV. My Xiaomi phone supports both Miracast and Google Cast but they seem to promote Miracast because with Google Cast it displayed some performance related warning and it was laggy (maybe it's not accelerated). And Linux up to now only had some hacky Miracast expeeiments. Maybe now it will finally change.

Agree that it would be *really* nice to have at least one consistent cross-platform standard for this. I could leverage in so many ways at work. The first time I used Miracast, I had a Windows-based user that wanted to project onto an ~40" television to share content with others in their office. Did my "homework" and purchased a ~$40 MS Miracast adapter/dongle - plugged one end into an HDMI port for signal and the other into a USB port for power, and the television was good to go. Laptop was new enough to support (research showed some minimum graphics driver requirements aligned with Windows, cannot recall the terms off-hand - but anything relatively modern should be good.)

User no longer needed this, so repurposed on a ceiling mounted projector that had an HDMI and USB port, so same setup basically. Laptop was used to project lab equipment imaging. If there was some sort of cross-platform solution that "just worked" and was simple to use and just included, things like conference rooms, etc. could be a lot simpler.

[mitch971]

Oh? Whats not included in:
https://chromium.googlesource.com/ch...EAD/chromecast

Also :

https://developers.google.com/cast

[M@GOid]

We got a couple projectors at work that have Miracast support. It seems nice, the delay is minimal and is very practical in the sense you no longer need unreliable HDMI cables to share a screen.

Looking at Wikipedia it seems Miracast is the child of the WiFi Aliance, so I find a little odd others felt the need to create alternatives. Probably it has to do with royalties.