Chromecast should be more open and hackable -- there are a number of small projects we could do to get interesting use out of these devices
also I wish Picture-in-Picture (PIP) or overlaying text/video stream with alpha transparency/blending over another video stream is more widely supported in consumer devices
I may want to utilize my big screen displays for work but put a small view of scoreboard / live sports from another device somewhere
There are already a number of Android TV based boxes/sticks out there that are quite hackable. The only thing Chromecast adds is integration with the phone apps.
Chromecast is very hackable, it's literally just running a browser. Most anything that you can put on a webpage you can display on a Chromecast. There are plenty of PIP integrations in the wild.
From a client perspective it's not trivial to say "display another video on top of this one in a region" and I am not sure how you could achieve that while making it "simpler" than it is today.
http://stestagg.github.io/dashcast/ allows you to display arbitrary URLs on your device. From my experience doing so is built on a pile of hacks (it’s not actually casting an arbitrary URL, it’s casting the registered-with-google dashcast App ID, and then the dashcast app loads an arbirary URL inside it), but the end result mostly works
If you can convince VLC to render the subtitles into a new video stream then it'll work. You're effectively creating a new video though. By default VLC just renders subtitles in the player, you need to encode/transcode them into the output stream.
I already commented on this, but I didn't like the "solution" of re-encoding the video with the subtitles baked in, so check out https://gist.github.com/HartS/9bb2721fa73b6798efcdbf5c463e87... if you want a way to play (and cast) local videos with subtitle support.
I threw this together as quickly as possible, so it won't be as feature-rich as VLC, but I believe it will still work for many use cases. If you need additional controls, I think video-js (the OSS video player library this uses) supports them, but you'll have to look into their API. You may also be able to get speed controls working with https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/video-speed-control... , which is honestly one of the biggest QoL improvements I've had from a chrome extension
It works really well too, it was the only reason I bought a chromecast because I wasn't going to be streaming from my (android) phone.
As the other comment notes though there's no subtitle support, which is a little frustrating, but I guess that depends on the kinda media you watch, and the language(s) involved.
Are you referring to the new Chromecast with Google TV? Because I've set up Chromecast without internet access or a Google account before. I wonder if this changed somewhere along the way.
I was talking about an older chromecast, 3rd gen, and what I did with it. I’m sure it works without internet, I’m sure I activated it with internet (the chromecast now appears in my home on my google account), I’m not sure whether activation is absolutely required.
I bought one originaly assuming I could stream local videos to it or like read them from a network drive, but Google force SaaS cloud everything on the user.
There is not even a proper way to remote control it.
Just BS workarounds on what should have been core functionality.
At one high end hotel I wanted to simply connect the room's TV to my laptop over HDMI. Unfortunately no HDMI socket, confirmed at the reception and with their technician... "just share the screen over chromecast, it's so cool you only have to install an app". Is Google lobbying even at the hotels?! Sounds innocent but the decision "our hotel will have chromecast instead of HDMI" looks like... there were some incentives.
How much profit for Google is it per TV? I have a hard time believing it is worth the hazzle for the hotel to make a deal, but surely as some bribe to the procurement officer at the hotel (think McDonalds' ice cream machine deal) or the TV supplier might have some spyware deal with Google?
For people who like to watch with subtitles, VLC currently doesn't support streaming to chromecast with SRT subtitles.. there are several issues for it and I believe support is slated for the next major version of VLC, but not sure when that will be.
The typical "workaround" is to reencode the video file to include the subtitles directly, but that sounded like too much work, so I hacked together a static page using https://videojs.com/ to embed a player and load the video and subtitles in a browser window.
This was hacked together as quickly as possible for my own needs, so definitely not intended to be an example of clean code. You need to run the python server separately to serve the SRT because video-js can't load it from a file URL IIRC
We suspect that some TVs and OSs capture screenshots then profile and monetize us, and that's annoying. Why would one intentionally stream at all times the screen content through the servers of an ad company?! "convenience"?!
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[ 0.60 ms ] story [ 75.8 ms ] threadChromecast should be more open and hackable -- there are a number of small projects we could do to get interesting use out of these devices
also I wish Picture-in-Picture (PIP) or overlaying text/video stream with alpha transparency/blending over another video stream is more widely supported in consumer devices
I may want to utilize my big screen displays for work but put a small view of scoreboard / live sports from another device somewhere
From a client perspective it's not trivial to say "display another video on top of this one in a region" and I am not sure how you could achieve that while making it "simpler" than it is today.
https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#per...
I threw this together as quickly as possible, so it won't be as feature-rich as VLC, but I believe it will still work for many use cases. If you need additional controls, I think video-js (the OSS video player library this uses) supports them, but you'll have to look into their API. You may also be able to get speed controls working with https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/video-speed-control... , which is honestly one of the biggest QoL improvements I've had from a chrome extension
As the other comment notes though there's no subtitle support, which is a little frustrating, but I guess that depends on the kinda media you watch, and the language(s) involved.
Last year I was looking for a cast stick but couldn't find a one without internet connection requirement.
But then it works on local LAN without internet
I have no idea whether it’s possible to use it without activation
It is a very simple protocol with several different clients (including terminal clients) and receivers based on Electron and Android.
Also available on Firestick TV, Playstore, Android TV.
Future support for AppleTV, WebOS, TizenOS is coming.
Regardless, I'm glad this exists. Hopefully in the future it becomes more prevalent.
I bought one originaly assuming I could stream local videos to it or like read them from a network drive, but Google force SaaS cloud everything on the user.
There is not even a proper way to remote control it.
Just BS workarounds on what should have been core functionality.
The typical "workaround" is to reencode the video file to include the subtitles directly, but that sounded like too much work, so I hacked together a static page using https://videojs.com/ to embed a player and load the video and subtitles in a browser window.
Here it is in gist form if anyone has a similar issue: https://gist.github.com/HartS/9bb2721fa73b6798efcdbf5c463e87...
This was hacked together as quickly as possible for my own needs, so definitely not intended to be an example of clean code. You need to run the python server separately to serve the SRT because video-js can't load it from a file URL IIRC
It works locally reading the video file from the file:// url (though strangely needs http for the subtitle track)