I've been using Chromecasts and it's gotten so slow and buggy. I was trying to cast from VLC on my phone to it and I had a ton of trouble getting it to show up and connect and after I finished streaming from my phone I tried to switch to the YouTube app and it just kept on crashing.
It's 2024, I'm tired of dealing with shitty tv streaming experiences. I want something completely uncompromising. I want a silky smooth experience and I don't want it to randomly break on my.
I'm thinking about shelling out for a shield TV, but I'd rather have control over my device since I don't want to deal with the manufacturers fucking around with my device after the fact.
I'd love to be able to set up a raspberry pi for this, but would I be able to get a seamless experience? I don't mind doing extra up front work to get it set up, but I don't want it to be an ongoing maintenance thing, and I'd like it to work with Chromecast so it's easy to stream to from a variety of devices.
Can I actually pull that off with a raspberry pi or should I go with the shield TV?
Android tv on lineage by https://konstakang.com/ might be worth looking at. Havent tried it myself but here is a review of android 10 https://youtu.be/zN3zcUpeW8U?feature=shared which is quite old and I imagine there have been a lot of improvements by now. I might be wrong so anyone feel free to correct: I dont think pi 4 has wifi on android tv only ethernet, but I think pi 5 does have wifi on android plus better graphics drivers.
I saw that and it looks very promising. My biggest question is about being able to cast to it. I'd really like to be able to use the Chromecast standard since it's built into so many things, and I'm not sure if it's feasible to get it set up on an open source setup without it being unreliable or finicky, so I'm hoping to hear if anyone has gotten a smooth setup with it.
As much as I'd like full control over my device out of principle, I'm just sick and tired of something as simple as being able to stream to my TV being so choppy and unreliable.
Yeah, unfortunately Chromecast is not a standard in that sense. It's a locked down Google thing that you aren't allowed to Self Host. I'm not aware of any compatible implementations, and even if there was one I'd have to assume it involved "stolen" keys or something similarly "forbidden".
What are you casting? if its just youtube then why not just use the app? the only way to find out is to try it out, I suggest pi 5 as its much more compatible with android but at that price you might as well just got an android device if casting is the most imbortant thing to you ie firestick, roku stick.
Edit: or just a google chromecast device?
there used to be rpicast but that hasnt kept up with android releases and youd be casting to a rpi os desktop which would probably be a bit more hands on than it sounds like you want it to be
I was casting video files from VLC. When I switched to YouTube I was trying to use the YouTube app on the Google tv. I'm starting to think my Google tv might be fucked up somehow so maybe I need to do a factory reset, but I have 2 of them and while ones better than the other, neither is that smooth.