If your TV had a feature that enabled you to mix your own sound, would you use it?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Do you have any idea if those things, Roku and the others, work with a VPN or are they just receivers essentially for what’s being cast to them from my computer?

22

Christopher Nolan is not in favour of this idea - “There may be a very loud explosion any moment now” - he was almost heard to mumble.

23

Exactly the same here !
(These features are all simple and possible)

24

Absolutely. We have to use subtitles almost all the time now, because quite often the dialogue is being overshadowed by the background sounds or the soundtrack.

25

Not sure about the Roku, but on Apple TV and Google TV, the VPN provider has to offer an app for that device.

Or if your router supports whole-network VPN, then any device connected to it should go through the VPN, including your smart TV device.

This is a separate question than the VPN, but usually, yes, they can do both:

  1. They usually have their own apps (like you can watch Netflix and Disney or whatever without needing a phone, computer or other device)
  2. But you can usually ALSO “cast” to them, if your devices are compatible. If you have an iPhone, it’s easy to stream (“Airplay”) to an Apple TV. If you have an Android, it’s easy to “cast” to a Google TV. Going across brands may be a bit more meddlesome. Some TVs support both.

In my experience, the TV built-in apps and casting functionality are crap. It’s better to buy a standalone device (Apple TV for iPhone users, Google TV for Android users).

At home I use an Apple TV with an Android phone. It’s a sub-par experience in many ways, full of compromises and annoyances, but eh, it ultimately still does the job and I’m too cheap/lazy to replace it.

26

One could try using audio compression to bring most of the various levels into line. I use Breakaway.

27

There are several different technologies colloquially called “casting” or “mirroring”:

  • Miracast is a technology where a device like a phone encodes everything being displayed on its screen in real time and sends it as a bitstream to a TV. The TV decodes the bitstream and displays the image. So the TV displays exactly what’s being displayed on the phone screen.
  • AirPlay is an Apple technology that works similarly to Miracast, but since Apple doesn’t play well with others, it is incompatible with Miracast. Some non-Apple devices like Roku also support AirPlay.
  • DIAL (Discovery and Launch) is a quite different technology where a device like a phone can send a request to a TV to play some remote content, such as a YouTube or Netflix video. Once the video starts playing on the TV, the phone isn’t involved. The video stream comes directly from the YouTube or Netflix server, not from the phone like in Miracast. When you tell YouTube to “cast” a video to a TV, it’s using DIAL.