badjesus Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 So, I have been messing around with my chromecast for a while now, and seeing a few of the apps. I am quite impressed with this little device. I purchased the EV driver as well to fool around with it. The main things I have discovered are; I can see that it is possible to stream from existing software, especially utilizing chrome. For instance, the Videostream app is quite sweet, being able to stream a video file from your local HDD direct to the chromecast. It seems to work flawlessly and quite simply. So then it got me thinking.... if you had an HDMI capture card on the computer, how much more difficult would it be to capture that stream and send it to the chromecast? I am assuming this would be exponentially more difficult, lol, but probably not impossible.So then I really started to think. With the SONOS matrix, and how it works. Would it actually be possible to have a similar set up to be able to utilize the chromecast as a video matrix? Most of us have less than 4 inputs, but a lot of us have more than 4 outputs. Imagine how much it would change the C4 world to have a matrix available at that low of a cost. At the very least, if we could pair the functionality of videostream with chromecast and C4 to be able to use our C4 library to push direct to the chromecast without the use of plex, that could be wild. For now, it seems that chromecast is a 1->1 but if you can take that stream and have each chromecast capture it at the same time, that would dramatically change things. I am not sure if it woudl have this limitation? WIFI bandwidth could also become a huge detriment here. I am sure there are 1000's of things over my head here, but I thought it could make for an interested discussion if nothing else. Jamie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanchow Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Not impossible though not a task i'm going to take on. Plex does something similar by transcoding content that you own to a format that is compatible with the Chromecast. I'm sure given time someone may develop something that can do this. A potential issue however that would arise is latency in encoding and decoding. This will not effect video/audio sync but will effect the perceived delay between remote control button press and action on the screen. I have seen this with some similar technology in the past. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msgreenf Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 And if you want to do the transcode on your home controller that cause performance problems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badjesus Posted August 6, 2014 Author Share Posted August 6, 2014 Yeah, I can understand the delay. I have already witnessed this with the Chromecast as well. The transcoding could always be worked out by dedicating it to the PC that would be capturing the video and outputting to the Chromecasts. I am not sure though if transcoding can be done on the fly like that (from video capture input, not from file)?Definitely sounds plausible but a HUGE undertaking. If nothing else, cool to think about where the technology will take us in the next 10 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.