Chromecast better on phone than on laptop.

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For some unknown reason last night, ESPN stopped broadcasting a basketball game right in the middle of the first half.

So, I grabbed my laptop, and found the game being shown on the ESPN website. So, I used my Chromecast to send it to my TV.

At halftime, I realized that I'd never used the Chromecast app on my phone yet. So, I pulled up the game using the ESPN app, and then fired up the Chomecast app, and sent the game to my TV... and started watching the second half.

Here's the issue... it worked better using my phone (RAZR M running KitKat), than it does either one of my Dell laptops. One laptop is running 7, the other running Vista.

What is happening here? This is the exact opposite of what I expected. I expected that the phone would have more lag and choppiness... but it was the laptops that have the lag and the occasional "hang".

Is some of it that the laptops are trying to do it in HD, where the phone isn't?
 
I don't know the answer, but I noticed something similar with Plex on Chromecast, too. The playback was smoother when I cast from my Razr M than when I cast from my W7 laptop.

In theory, it should not matter because once you start casting, Chromecast establishes its own connection with the stream source, but I guess it's more complicated than that.

Curious to see if anyone knows the answer...
 
On your laptops, were you casting from your browser window (Chrome only I believe)? Then were you casting on your phone directly from the ESPN app?
 
Laptop browser sharing taxes your router with the data being streamed 3 times compared to direct casting.
 
The Chromecast is a great device. Got my Dad one for X-mas this year. He'll love watching Three Stooges and old snowmobile videos on the 37" instead of the 17" computer screen.
 
My wife and I have both the Chromecast and a Roku 3.

For home use use the Roku 3 and when traveling have used the Chromecast.

Both work well and we have cut the cable at home.
 
Originally Posted By: aa1986
Laptop browser sharing taxes your router with the data being streamed 3 times compared to direct casting.

In my case, when I cast something to Chromecast from Plex from the PC browser, there is no network activity taking place between the PC and the router. Heck, I can even close the browser at that point, and Chromecast will continue playing the content. So that's probably not it.
 
There are different ways ChromeCast works. The best is that you instruct it what you want to show and it downloads and streams all by itself. The other is streaming content off your device/PC to ChromeCast. Chances are you phone is instructing while your browser is streaming.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: aa1986
Laptop browser sharing taxes your router with the data being streamed 3 times compared to direct casting.

In my case, when I cast something to Chromecast from Plex from the PC browser, there is no network activity taking place between the PC and the router. Heck, I can even close the browser at that point, and Chromecast will continue playing the content. So that's probably not it.


Is the definition / resolution of the casted content the same?
 
Originally Posted By: aa1986

Is the definition / resolution of the casted content the same?

Not sure. When I cast from the phone, there doesn't seem to be any control over the quality that it tells the ChromeCast to use.
 
Your phone tells Chromecast what to download directly to it from ESPN server. ESPN>Chromecast

Chromecast in Chrome on PC that basically casts the image across your network. ESPN>PC>Router>Chromecast

Plex on a PC is a controller and not an image recast of browser tab.
 
I found personally to cast shows from PC/Chrome/Chromecast you need to send over ethernet wire with a strong laptop (Mine is a Thinkpad W530) and at best you only get 720 with occasional skip. I do this with Amazon.com.

Thankfully flood of apps have come in with Chromecast abilities recently.
 
If you need ethernet, then you may as well go with an hdmi cable.

One drawback so far for me for my setup with Chromecast is lack of Surround Sound output with Netflix as the input.
 
Originally Posted By: aa1986
One drawback so far for me for my setup with Chromecast is lack of Surround Sound output with Netflix as the input.


This was something I was trying to figure out. When the ChromeCast is directly connected to a AV receiver, it does switch between 44.1 and 48k sampling rates based on content.

That gave hope that perhaps it also bitstreams Dolby Digital, but I have yet to find any that work. But I've only had the ChromeCast less than 5 days.
 
I don't have an HDMI AV receiver. My TV is capable of outputting 5.1 to my AV receiver however. It works with multiple sources but not with Chromecast.

I got the Chromecast several months ago and this was a complaint in the forums. They may have fixed it through updates but I haven't checked since then.
 
Originally Posted By: aa1986
One drawback so far for me for my setup with Chromecast is lack of Surround Sound output with Netflix as the input.

The issue with Netflix specifically is that they don't use regular Dolby Digital. They use Dolby Digital Plus, and apparently some receivers don't handle this format correctly.

Here is one example:
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/90-receive...rious-avrs.html


Now, apparently with a recent update, Chromecast now supports Dolby Digital (AC3) passthrough, but I don't know if Netflix has any plans of supporting this format on their end.


I know my receiver detects proper DD 5.1 stream from Chromecast when playing something via Plex. But I have not checked what happens when Netflix content is played.
 
Originally Posted By: aa1986
I don't have an HDMI AV receiver. My TV is capable of outputting 5.1 to my AV receiver however. It works with multiple sources but not with Chromecast.

This is a whole other issue. Due to some stupid copy right protection legalese, most TVs don't output DD 5.1. The only source for which a TV is allowed to output DD 5.1 is the TV tuner connected via the concentric cable. So if you are getting your HD channels from an antenna, then this signal can get outputted from the TV in DD 5.1, but no other source.

And if you have one of these rare TVs that is in fact capable of outputting DD 5.1 for other sources, chances are it has issues interpreting the DD+ format that Netflix is using with their streaming content.
 
Originally Posted By: rjundi
Plex on a PC is a controller and not an image recast of browser tab.

That's what I thought. So we still don't have an answer why video quality is worse in this case.
 
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