Intel Is Working On Miracast (HDMI Over Wireless) For Linux

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 4 December 2015 at 07:38 AM EST. 18 Comments
INTEL
Developers at Intel are working on Miracast support for X.Org and Wayland on Linux to transmit HDMI signals over wireless for desktop mirroring, etc.

So far they have hacked together an implementation to mirror the current desktop using GStreamer. However, they are looking at doing an implementation where they hook into the DRM interfaces to avoid having to patch every compositor with support. However, as they have already been working on this in user-space, they aren't looking to implement this full Miracast support within the kernel.

An initial idea was to do everything in user-space by redirecting the ioctls to user-space, but concerns were raised over implementing too much and allowing proprietary graphics drivers to be implemented in user-space atop any new interfaces from this work.

The path forward for implementing Miracast can be found via this DRI mailing list thread.

It'd be great to see open-source Linux Miracast support panning out. Previously there was work in that direction with OpenWFD and MiracleCast, but we haven't heard much about those efforts now in two years. Windows, Android, and other platforms already support Miracast so it will be great to see this "HDMI over WiFi" supported by the mainline Linux desktop. The Miracast specification is nearly three years old by the WiFi Alliance.
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