Popular media streaming app ‘AllCast’ will make it easy to mirror your Android screen on your PC in its next update.
The app has featured integration with Google Chrome for some time, enabling photos and videos to be ‘cast’ from its mobile app to the companion ‘receiver’ Chrome App on a regular PC.
Support for full mirroring, like that recently made available through Chromecast, has been a more limited affair, only fully working with the Nexus 5 handset.
In a classic example of ‘what a difference one evening can make’, AllCast’s chief developer, Koushik Dutta has hacked the mirroring code to use the common H.264 video format instead of the (limiting) WebRTC/VP8 encoder combo.
The switch should, Dutta says, mean ‘pretty much any modern phone‘ can mirror its screen to a PC with the companion Chrome App installed.
Video Demo
A video demo of the feature accompanied Dutta’s announcement, which we’ve embedded below. It gives a good overview of how it works, but is plagued by a small delay between input on the handset and relay in the browser. Dutta has since said that he has “fixed the latency problem.”
Chromecasting
AllCast mirroring only works between the Android app and the receiver app, meaning it’s not quite as versatile as using a Chromecast. That said, it fulfils a need that Chromecast doesn’t, and could prove invaluable for those wanting to demo an app on a laptop or looking to record a short screencast.
The necessary upgrade should arrive in the main stable Android AllCast app soon, but you can grab a free beta version of ‘Mirror’ from the link below.
For any of AllCast’s ‘Chrome’ features to work you need to use the AllCast Receiver App. This is available for free on the Chrome Web Store.
- Source: Google+