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NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

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Re: NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

#41

Post by ghostly_s »

akvadrako wrote: post #33
xenomachina wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the #1 use-case for casting, to play movies that sit on your device (phone, laptop) on your TV Is it really, though? I've used "casting" many times, and it was always to cast something that was "on the cloud", never something that was on my phone, to my TV. For example, it's a lot easier to find a specific YouTube video with my phone than with my TV remote.

Well NymphCast does that too. The 2nd feature mentioned in their README: > Streaming online content by passing a URL to the server.

I suspect what they mean is digging around in the source of a webpage to find the content url, hoping it's not obfuscated or DRM'd, and passing that; not "passing a URL" in the sense of streaming arbitrary web pages as Chromecast is able to do.

Re: NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

#42

Post by monocasa »

ghostly_s wrote: post #40
gizdan wrote: post #39

I'm curious. Usually when something like an open source alternative to a product is highly sought after feature, someone will often attempt to reverse engineer the apis or something mostly so it works with the current ecosystem. What has made Google Cast so resistant to this? I can't imagine the protocol being a complex one. Does anyone know?

from what I've heard it's actually quite complex, using different "streaming" strategies (often not streaming from the source device at all, but instead loading the desired content directly on the chromecast device) depending on the nature of the content.

IIRC there's also a per sink device signature verification scheme inherent in the protocol as the devices check in to Google's backend that makes it nearly impossible to just spin up arbitrary sink devices. Google has to have known about the device's public key before they'll talk to it, and it requires their backend fundamentally to work. That key association is probably a manufacturing step that we're not privy to.

Re: NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

#43

Post by caslon »

ghostly_s wrote: post #41
akvadrako wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well NymphCast does that too. The 2nd feature mentioned in their README: > Streaming online content by passing a URL to the server.

I suspect what they mean is digging around in the source of a webpage to find the content url, hoping it's not obfuscated or DRM'd, and passing that; not "passing a URL" in the sense of streaming arbitrary web pages as Chromecast is able to do.

Why wouldn't it be able to do both? youtube-dl has solved that exact use-case for years.

Re: NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

#44

Post by jrm4 »

I thought this might have been the thing I'm looking for; relatively painless screencasting or sharing from a local (Linux) PC to another device on the network (e.g. Raspberry Pi + Big Screen TV). The use case isn't necessarily full motion video + audio, but more for business/conference room type use, where response time isn't wildly important, since it's something like a whiteboard.

Monitor-over-network would be great too, but not a requirement; I'm aware that solutions exist, but so far everything I've tried has been painfully clunky.

Re: NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

#45

Post by akvadrako »

kingosticks wrote: post #38

Technically it might be an "open-source Google Cast" alternative but it's definitely not an "Open-source Chromecast" alternative. If it was, I would be able to open any app that supports Google Cast and control a device running this software like I can control a Chromecast. But it doesn't support that, and that's what most people are expecting/wanting. It might be a great project but it's not able to provide the tigh…

On the contrary, an open alternative to Google Cast is very welcome and much better than a Chomecast clone. The protocol is not very good so trying to re-implement it is just asking for trouble.

Re: NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

#46

Post by crispyporkbites »

akvadrako wrote: post #45
kingosticks wrote: post #38

Technically it might be an "open-source Google Cast" alternative but it's definitely not an "Open-source Chromecast" alternative. If it was, I would be able to open any app that supports Google Cast and control a device running this software like I can control a Chromecast. But it doesn't support that, and that's what most people are expecting/wanting. It might be a great project but it's not able to provide the tigh…

On the contrary, an open alternative to Google Cast is very welcome and much better than a Chomecast clone. The protocol is not very good so trying to re-implement it is just asking for trouble.

Yes but it’s unusable in 99% of apps, so it doesn’t matter how technically brilliant it is

Re: NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

#47

Post by colordrops »

akvadrako wrote: post #45
kingosticks wrote: post #38

Technically it might be an "open-source Google Cast" alternative but it's definitely not an "Open-source Chromecast" alternative. If it was, I would be able to open any app that supports Google Cast and control a device running this software like I can control a Chromecast. But it doesn't support that, and that's what most people are expecting/wanting. It might be a great project but it's not able to provide the tigh…

On the contrary, an open alternative to Google Cast is very welcome and much better than a Chomecast clone. The protocol is not very good so trying to re-implement it is just asking for trouble.

And even better would be to support the Google Cast protocol to increase adoption while offering a roadmap to transition to a better protocol.

Re: NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

#48

Post by stormbrew »

akvadrako wrote: post #30
alias_neo wrote: post #22

There is clearly a lot of misunderstanding in the comments here. I feel like the repository is causing confusion by referring to Chromecast. This has nothing to do with Chromecast, nor does it have anything to do with Google Cast, nor will it let or help you "Cast" anything like YouTube to your Cast capable devices. What this is, is an (early) software implementation to stream media from a control device (your phone…

You say this has nothing to do with Chromecast and then describe the #1 use-case for casting, to play movies that sit on your device (phone, laptop) on your TV. Jellyfin, based on their website, looks like just another media server.

The #1 use case for 'casting' with a chromecast in my house is absolutely to stream from online services to my tv or monitor while controlling it from a device that would melt or run down its battery if it tried to act as a go-between for the data, or had to potentially re-encode data from its storage to what the tv can support.

That's still the niche that chromecast fills better than anything else at a price point that means you can buy one for every tv and monitor in your house for the cost of a more fully featured device with storage on one or two tvs.

Sadly google seems to hate the chromecast and even their own software gets worse at casting to it every year.

Re: NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

#49

Post by akvadrako »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #46
akvadrako wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, an open alternative to Google Cast is very welcome and much better than a Chomecast clone. The protocol is not very good so trying to re-implement it is just asking for trouble.

Yes but it’s unusable in 99% of apps, so it doesn’t matter how technically brilliant it is

Chromecast is also unusable for 99% of apps. On Linux, there is no reliable way to use it to play movies with embedded subtitles on your TV. Probably because the protocol is too hard to implement.

Re: NymphCast – Open-source Chromecast Alternative

#50

Post by squarefoot »

I don't understand the point behind "casting" something in a home environment, unless one keeps the client unsupervised. It could make sense in contexts where say one or more unsupervised signage displays are connected to small embedded boards that throw at the screens whatever feed is being streamed to them. That would be ok, but what about home environments?

Let me give an example. I keep all my media in a home NAS (Nas4Free plus RAID etc.) as simple files (mpeg4 etc.). My home TV is connected to a RPi running Kodi that accesses the file list through SMB/NFS shares, as every other computer in the house. If I want to watch a movie, I use Kodi to navigate the file list until I find the relevant file and play it. There are no downsides since it's a one click solution, and the pretty good CEC support by Kodi and the RPi makes it a breeze (one single remote for both the TV and Kodi) but this way the file is being transcoded by the player (the RPi) and not by the streming hardware, which would be an often less powerful platform like a NAS. This also means the streamed content travels as compressed packets through the network, in fact loading it a lot less than for example it would happen when streaming it after transcoding. As a result, I could have like 10 machines watching each one its own Full HD movie on a home wired network, which would be unthinkable if the poor NAS had to transcode all of them on the fly, not to mention the much heavier network load.

So the question is: what's the point in streaming in home environments rather than navigating file shares?

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