My wife and I do a fair amount of family chats using Google Meet. We tend to do these huddled around an iPad using the Google Meet web app.
It would be nice to do these video calls on our big smart TV instead. The plan would be to dial into the video call from either my iPad or iPhone, and cast the session to the TV, meaning the iDevice is just providing the camera and mic and we’re watching the big screen.
The help pages state that I need either a Chomecast device connected to the TV, or a TV with a built in Chromecast. I don’t have the former, and I don’t think I have the latter. So the obvious solution would be to get a Chromecast.
What’s giving me pause, though is that I can cast from the YouTube app on my iPad to the TV. I don’t really get why that would be any different, although we have the YouTube installed locally on the smart TV so maybe that’s the difference.
I’m happy to get a Chromecast if that’s the easiest way, but I just wanted to check that the brains trust agree that’s the tight way forward.
There are several different technologies that are all colloquially called “casting”. When you cast YouTube from your iPad to the TV, all that’s happening is your iPad is telling the YouTube app on your TV “please play this YouTube URL”. Then the app in the TV takes over and just plays the video from the URL, in the same way that it would if you had selected the video on the TV. The iPad is not involved anymore and isn’t sending any screen data to the TV. You can exit the YouTube app on your phone and the TV will continue playing the video.
For your Google Meet application you want a real “mirroring” situation, where the screen on the iPad is being copied frame-by-frame to the TV. There are ways to do this without a Chromecast, but only if both the TV and the casting device support the same mirroring technology. The most common such technology is Miracast. Some TVs support it internally, but Apple being Apple prefers to use their own proprietary technology rather than an industry standard, so I don’t think iPads support Miracast. Apple’s equivalent is AirPlay, so if your TV supports Airplay it could work, but I don’t think many TVs support Airplay. You could get a device that supports AirPlay to connect to your TV instead of a Chromecast, like an AppleTV or a Roku, but you still need that new device.
Disclaimer: all this information is based on what I knew of the technology when I retired about 3 years ago, so some of it may have changed.
Thinking about it, it would seem to make sense to get something like a Roku streamer rather than a Chromecast, because that way I could cast all content to the TV, not just Google apps. I’m thinking particularly of when I do Zoom calls as well as Google Meet.
I don’t have much need for a streaming box for anything else, since the smart TV already has apps for the services I use, but a Roku box doesn’t look too expensive a way to enable comfier video calls. Am I right in assuming that if I get an AirPlay compatible streaming box, I can mirror any content from my phone to the TV? It isn’t app-specific?
I haven’t used AirPlay myself before, so I can’t say for sure. Miracast works by mirroring the raw screen contents to the TV, so you can see your phone’s home screen, browser content, apps, etc. as well as video. Doing some research, it seems that AirPlay is different, in that it only mirrors video content. So you can mirror a video playing in any app, but you can’t mirror non-video content. I’m not sure about Zoom. I just tested this by casting YouTube on my MacBook to my Roku and that does appear to be the case. Maybe someone who has used AirPlay more extensively can confirm this.
This set of instructions from Roku describes how to use AirPlay; it says to first pick a video, then select AirPlay, whereas with Miracast you first enable Miracast to mirror the phone, then you can play a video or do anything else and the phone’s screen always appears on the TV. That page also lists the Roku devices that support AirPlay.
I’ll just say that I had a Roku box before my first smart TV, and once I got a smart TV, I found that using the Roku was a better experience than in the built-in apps. The UI was nicer and switching aspect ratios was easier. And since, as you say, they’re cheap (mostly under US$100), why not?
Having done some research, it looks like Airplay to a Roku device will do exactly what I want.
Annoyingly, Roku devices appear to be out of stock everywhere in the UK - they seem to be having some supply issues. The other option would be an Apple TV box, but that’s three times the price. Oh well, it isn’t urgent.
Did you look on Amazon? I see several Roku devices for sale on amazon.co.uk, although I’m not positive I’m seeing what’s actually available to a UK purchaser. You can also buy directly from Roku at Roku.
One other thing you should be aware of: when mirroring a screen, there’s an unavoidable delay introduced. It takes some time for the iPad to encode the video and push the data through its network stack, and then more delay for the TV to receive the data through its network stack, decode the video and display it. This can amount to some tens of milliseconds. If you’re just watching a video it’s no big deal, but if you’re doing something interactive like playing a game or talking to someone over Zoom, it could be annoying.