AirPlay Alternative Mirrors and Streams To TVs and PCs

DeviceGuru writes "AirTame has developed an AirPlay-like protocol and HDMI dongle for 1080p video streaming and screen mirroring from PCs to PCs and TVs, and has substantially exceeded its $160,000 Indiegogo funding goal. AirTame streams from Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs to other PCs via apps at both ends, and to TVs via the HDMI dongle, and also offers a multicast mode for broadcasting to multiple PCs and TVs for use in classrooms or conferences. But at least initially, there won't be support for Android or iOS devices in the mix, due OS restrictions. The company says it plans to release AirTame's software, API, and protocol source code under a dual-license enabling free use with GPL-like restrictions, and paid use for commercial applications requiring proprietary modifications."

Comments

Video latency

[tepples]

The article claims that AirTame lets users "drag windows over and back to your primary display", which means it might even support latencies low enough for gaming or other interactive access to a machine across a LAN. That appears to be a goal given AirTame's support for "joystick, key-press, and mouse events" How's the video latency on Chromecast?

Re:Video latency

[xombo]

AirPlay already does this. The standard seems open enough that there are many 3rd party apps that I use which can broadcast to the AppleTV. Plus, it has all the infrastructure, updates, and support of Apple.

$160,000 for this project? Am I missing something?

Re: Video latency

[therealobsideus]

Chromecast is pretty great, but as it is merely an extension on the pc/mac within chrome all you can do is view a single tab of the browser, or use one of the services. I'm not concerned with broadcasting my entire desktop or laptop environment to my tbs, I just want access to all of my tvs, movies and music in he. With plex media server and plex apps, I now have easy, user friendly access to all my media on my tvs or other devices (cell, tablet, and my roommates can access my media content on their devices as well).

Re: Video latency

[tysonedwards]

Airplay and Miracast already do this. So if you are an anti-Apple zealot, you still have a perfectly good option.

Re: Video latency

[ichthus]

You don't have to be any kind of zealot to dislike Apple. iTunes makes it quite easy.

Re: Video latency

[smash]

iTunes can be quite happily ignored. I am a self confessed apple zealot and can count the number of times I've dealt with iTunes in the past year on 1 hand. Also, it's nowhere near as painful (like everything else) on the mac.

Re: Video latency

[tepples]

It's only on Windows and Android 4. So if your PC runs GNU/Linux or OS X, or your Android device runs 2.x (like old Kindles and some devices that the prepaid carriers were still selling last time I looked), too bad.

Re: Video latency

[ravenscar]

Maybe, like me, you have an AMD-based video card(s). AMD has yet to release (non-beta) drivers that support Miracast for my video cards. It's been talked about for months on the forums. I believe Nvidia provides the support for the majority of their recent cards already.

Re: Video latency

[iamhassi]

This airplay alternative uses a HDMI dongle to connect to a TV. There are many HDMI android dongles available that run full android and connect to TVs. Connect one of those and run any one of many streaming apps like miracast or logmein and voila, your PC/Mac/Linux is now on your TV

Ah ha! $89 (+ $15 outside of Denmark)

[93 Escort Wagon]

I skimmed through the whole thing, looking for the price. No wonder it's buried at the bottom - this costs as much as an Apple TV!

Miracast

[im_thatoneguy]

I find it notable that there is no mention of miracast anywhere in the GoGo description. Isn't this what Miracast is supposed to deliver?

Re:Miracast

[Vlado]

Actually there is mention of Miracast, alongside with Chromecast and Apple TV. The section you're looking for is the "Competitors" section.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/airtame-wireless-hdmi-for-everyone--2

I have to say that I haven't been playing around with any of these things yet, but what they (Airtame) are claiming, seems quite cool to me. Especially the part about desktop extension and multicast sharing.

Re:Android OS rescrictions?

[Zenin]

So clearly I must be imagining the Samsung WI-FI All-Share Cast Hub, Wireless HDMI Display Adapter, which...and I quote, "Mirrors phone screen on HDTV".

Re:yet another stupid, incompatible protocol

[smash]

Having the capability and putting out and easy to use, working implementation are two entirely different things. Sooner or later nerds will learn that this is where apple excels.

This Shit Pisses Me Off!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another one to add to the list.

WiDi, Chromecast, AirPlay, MiraPlay, DLNA and now this all in the already over crowded and virtually unusable 2.4GHz spectrum. Yet I still can't get my Samsung Galaxy S4 to stream to an Android dongle!

Connecting... Single frame... Black screen... wait wait wait... single frame... time out.
Oops, format not supported.
Video blocked due to lack of DRM! Fuck you!

TBH, at $35 Chromecast seems like the best chance at the moment, but I have to buy another dongle that I can't modify to accomplish what I want, putting my OWN video overlays, pop-ups, and security cameras on my TV. Also, Google.

Re:yet another stupid, incompatible protocol

[tlhIngan]

Last century, we had all of this capability, working, as RTP and RTSP. Of course, since that wasn't HTML-based (for very good reasons), we eneded up with DLNA, supported by hundreds, if not thousands, of devices from various vendors. Of course, Apple couldn't do anything already working and standard, which would mess up their revenue model of locking in the fanboys, so they came up with yet another protocol, as did Microsoft. Further, there are a few other minor players (Sonos, for example) that also created their own revenue-protection scheme.

DLNA and UPnP go hand in hand with Microsoft (in fact, part of the problem with DLNA is incompatible implementations between Microsoft Windows and other devices (back when it was DLNA and UPnP). This was solved years ago when DLNA and UPnP merged into one standard, which was fine as the various DLNA versions were incompatible. Yes, this is the same UPnP that opens holes in your firewall and all that - same protocol level, all done by Microsoft.

Apple's protocol is based on ZeroConf, which is an IETF standard for doing things like service discovery, except instead of broadcasts and multicasts, it relies solely on multicasted DNS (hence mDNSResponder), and is, for the most part (excepting the fact it's multicast) DNS.

AirPlay is a proprietary extension on top of it to allow output of lossless music, videos and other media. Of course, with the size of the Apple ecosystem and the age of AirPlay, changes to the system are impossible (and the keys are well known) without breaking a pile of things.

Also, with AirPlay so prevalent (it's in a lot of devices) there are more AirPlay sources than Apple devices - many Android apps support streaming output through AirPlay as a compatibility measure, and even things like XBMC support both input (i.e., it can act as an AirPlay target) and output (it can play to AirPlay targets).

Of course, if you want to be successful, make it work over Bluetooth. Sure you have A2DP, but that's an awful protocol with an even worse mandatory (lossy) codec ("high quality" 768kbps mode can sound worse than 128kbps MP3).