So I’m looking for a WiFi stick for my parent’s smartphone and TVs. My father will use the stick to plug it into his TV (or TVs in hotel rooms, etc.) to watch movies he has on his smartphone (galaxy s5 neo) or his tablet (kindle fire hd 10). So, it should be rather plug’n playish without any hassle. Any experience with those?
Am I right to assume that the WiFi direct functionality achieves this task? Anything I should look for in particular?
Chromecast works without a wifi connection to the internet. It’s basically wifi direct, yes. Note the wifi on your phone/tablet will be used to connect to the Chromecast, so if you want to stream Netflix or whatever you’ll have to use your cellular connection.
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Thanks, but as far as I know Chromecast does something different. It needs to be in a proper network and as mentioned above my father will take this device on their travels and to different hotels and Chromecast apparently does not work easily without a router.
Chromecast will work fine, look it up.
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Maybe this link is too old, but it doesn’t seem to work without any additional work:
Edit: Ok, this seems to be easier with newer version, but does not work on Kindle out of the box. While it is possible to install any Android apk on a Kindle device, I’ve noticed fewer and fewer apps work properly, due to the difference in the newest Android and the forked fireOS.
Yeah, it will only work on devices/apps that support chromecasting. Amazon Fire tablets only support miracast, which is poorly supported and just generally terrible.
I don’t have an amazon tablet myself, but a quick search suggests that sideloading the Chromecast app may be sufficient to get it working, with no need to root or go to the trouble of installing GApps, google play services, and the google play store.
Alternatively you could just get a HDMI adapter and have him plug his device into the hotel TV. That’ll work everywhere.
His Fire HD 10 doesn’t support that, this was my first idea. (And, had it wokred, I would have been the easiest method^^)
I’m a little skeptical to the sideloading approach. Not out of security concerns (obviously I have those as well), but rather because I’ve experienced less and less sideloaded apps to work properly. But thanks again for pointing to Chromecast.
Ahh wow, they really locked it down. Yeah if sideloading the Chromecast app works, that would be pretty easy. Otherwise, I suppose you’re stuck with a Miracast dongle. And Miracast is terrible.
The really did. Why do you know/think that Miracast is terrible?
We attempted to use miracast dongles to wirelessly present at work. It’s the worst. We ended up just plugging in Chromecasts and AppleTVs.
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