Issue 1404 61
CHROMECAST
and red. The short cable avoids the issues some owners had with
inconvenient HMDI socket locations. Thisround design also mirrors
its sister Cast dongle, which enables your audio system toreceive
and play streamed audio content.
SmootherWirelessVideo Casting
The Chromecast dongle works best when it’s streaming content
directly from the Internet and your smartphone or tablet is acting
as a remote control. When you’re using the ‘Cast’ Chrome
extension to mirror browser tabs things aren’t quite soreliable.
Why is this?Well, with natively supported sites likeYouTube,
Netflix and iPlayer the file is played directly through Chromecast.
However, play a video from a cast Chrome browser tab and the
host computer has to act as a web server, streaming the content
to the Chromecast device. Thus, when tab casting, the audio can
fall out of sync with the video, depending on the strength of the
wireless network and the host computer’s power.
If this happens to you, try downgrading the video quality of the
stream. Open the Options menu and set the ‘projection quality’ item
to Standard (480p). While the video won’t look quite as sharp, at
least it’ll be watchable.
Direct Connect Option
If you encounter the sort of casting problems mentioned above, but
don’t want to sacrifice video quality, there’s another option. Google
also sell an ethernet adapter Chromecast accessory, available for £15
from the Google Play store website (goo.gl/CPTxAS).
This ethernet adapter looks very similar to the Chromecast
power cord, but in this case the plug end includes a small Ethernet
port. This means you can connect it directly to yourrouter usinga
standard ethernet cable and bypass any wi-fi performance issues.
Maintain Full-screenVideo Mode
When you send a video from your phone or tablet to Chromecast,
you’re free to close the app and do other things at the same time.
But when using the Chrome browser on your PC to watch a video
you’ll need keep the tab running in full screen mode at all times, or
else it won’t appear in full screen on the television.
A workaround forWindows users is to use the Alt+Tab
shortcut to switch to another app. This allows the video to play
in full screen mode while you do something else.To return to
the video click on the Chrome window tab
in the taskbar. Mac or Linux users can do
something similar using their multiple
desktop switching functionality.
Stream Local Files
Chromecast doesn’t always have to
stream its content straight from the
Internet. Instead cast a Chrome browser
tab on aWindows/Mac/Linux PC or
Chromebook then browse and open local
files to stream them to the big screen.On aWindows PC open a new tab then enter ‘file:///C:/’ in the
address bar. For a Mac it’s a similar process except this time enter
‘file://localhost/User/my-user-name’ in the address bar (replacing
my-user-name with your login name).
Cast this newly opened tab then open any Chrome-supported file
type (.mp3, mp4, and so on) to see it on the big screen.TryThe Beta Extension
Google’s standard Chromecast extension is somewhat limited in
functionality. And the options aren’t exactly overwhelming either,
limited to just videoresolution settings.
However, true to Google tradition, there’s a Beta version of the
official extension. This includes a number of extra goodies to explore,
accessed via an extended ‘Options’ menu. Butremember, as it’s in
Beta what’s on offer is classed as experimental, so some features may
be a littlerough around the edges.
One option is the ‘Cast to Hangouts’ switch, which presents
your Chrome tab or window to a Google Hangout. Of course,
you will need to be signed in to Google to take advantage of this
capability. Google has provided a handy webpage to help with
Hangout Casting setup and information, including Google Calendar
scheduling (goo.gl/TJT7jS).
You can also mirror the complete desktop through Chromecast,
rather than just a single browser tab. This opens up a huge new set
of functionality. For example you could play media via desktop apps
like iTunes, Spotify and VLC. Or share full-screen photo slideshows
and display PowerPoint presentations.To optimise the user
experience there are settings for things like displayresolution, frame
rate and latency.It can do a whole lot more
than just stream video from
YouTube and Netflix
iBeta extension settings