nexus 5 miracast v slimport cable ?

[m_cozzy]

I need to output my phone to TV, mainly to watch virgin media anytime, so a chromecast is out.
Will a miracast dongle or a slimport to HDMI cable be the best way to do this ?

 

[Rusty!]

Anytime doesn't work with TV out. Whatever happens when you cast the screen via Chromecast will probably be the same with Miracast.

 

[Orcvader]

Certain devices, including your Nexus 5, can mirror the screen like a slimport/miracast connection via Chromecast:

So best way is to get a Chromecast . This completely removed the need of using a MHL cable for my HTC One M7, which I bought a week before this feature became avaliable...

 

[m_cozzy]

Ah thats interesting, I didnt think chromecast could do a screen mirror, I thought it just ran its own apps.
Thanks for the info re the cable out, I read that sky go or whatever its called blocked hdmi out, I didnt know virgin also blocked this. Potentially saved me some cash there. I had thought maybe the cable option would give a better resolution/picture.
I have tested miracast with virgin on my sony tv, works as expected.
I still dont fully understand the chromecast, despite reading the reviews, but may try to borrow one to test.
Soudns like it will be a tossup between a miracast dongle then or a chromecast.
Thanks for the advice.

EDIT I guess I also need to consider distance. I gather the chromecast goes via the router, could be too slow when the tv & phone is upstairs, whereas miracast is direct, so should suffer less lag being in the same room.

 

[Myshra]

Just to pre-warn you, Miracast is a bit wonky. Both my nexus 5 and Z2 have audio de-sync (when the devices are close enough to be touching) but my S5 is fine. Testing is with multiple tvs too, I couldn't work out a permanent fix. Mira is Wifi P2P so it should be awesome but eh, I found it awful and went back to MHL (which likely wont work for you sorry).

 

[Orcvader]

EDIT I guess I also need to consider distance. I gather the chromecast goes via the router, could be too slow when the tv & phone is upstairs, whereas miracast is direct, so should suffer less lag being in the same room.

Yup, the main disadvantage between Chromecast and Miracast is that it travels through the router first before actually arriving to it. My router itself is upstairs, but it can handle 1080p mirroring just fine. With my Nexus 10's 2560x1600 display however, as it contains nearly double the pixels, the quality is reduced. In terms of lag time, it's about half a second difference from the phone screen, but for media that won't negatively affect it.

But for apps that do natively support Chromecast, it goes straight to the Chromecast instead of through the phone first, and the quality is very good.

 

[Em3bbs]

If the Virgin Media app is anything like Sky Go then it won't work with any kind of screen mirroring or HDMI cable, they don't allow it citing licensing reasons. I can't imagine Sky would be happy with their same channels working this way via a competitor's app.

Having said that I'm interested to hear if it does work though as I have cable for internet but kept Sky due to there being no F1 in HD on Virgin, which there now is.

EDIT: Also agree with Myshra about Miracast, I've tried quite a few devices and it is generally pretty poor. The worst combination ironically seems to be my Samsung Miracast supporting Bluray player with any Samsung Allcast (or whatever it's called now) devices.

 

[m_cozzy]

Well what a useless piece of junk the chromecast is
It doesnt work.
Yes I admit this may be a virgin issue, but miracast built into my sony downstairs worked perfectly using the virgin app.
£30 wasted.

EDIT well it did kick in & start working, its a blocky stuttering mess, but I may be able to resolve that by bunging an access point in upstairs, so work in progress.

ANOTHER EDIT I did write a long reply but the forum lost it to summerize its the virgin app causing the slight jitter, slower moving tv is ok, it was motogp i was trying to watch. Miracast has exactly the same issue. Its not perfect, but its ok.

 

[Myshra]

It's possibly P2P mixing with standard hub/spoke wifi. The device has to work in mixed mode wifi (p2p to display unit, hub to your router. Think patting your head and rubbing your tummy ) and this is pretty uncharted territory for a lot of mobile network chipsets right now, they just can't really handle mixed mode/264encode/audio encode all at once and do a decent job Of the lot, Chromecast should in theory be the best but as you found out, Chromecast is on the watch list for mirroring tv which is really the biggest use for it...

TVcatchup for android doesn't have these problems if you want live tv for what it's worth.

 

[dabotsonline]

TVcatchup for android doesn't have these problems if you want live tv for what it's worth.

Zattoo works well, too.