The new Miracast technology for you: The trend goes to the second screen, because entertainment no longer only takes place in the living room on the TV. So you can not only listen to music, but also watch TV, consume internet videos and play games. A tablet is even better suited for its larger screen.
Now it's serious
More and more TV viewers sit with their new pad or laptop in front of the TV and interact interactively with their mobile device, as soon as the TV program is not quite as exciting. To let the rest of the family participate in their Internet trip, it would be great to be able to quickly and easily project his display onto the TV. This is exactly what should be possible with the new standard Miracast now: just show his loved ones the techniques at Angry Birds best shoot the bird, show the latest mobile phone photos or even with a Powerpoint presentation on the big screen astonish the colleagues and business partners.
The technique behind Miracast
In September 2012, the Wi-Fi Alliance, the organization that has set itself the standardization of wireless home networks, with virtually all relevant IT and CE companies, has announced that a certification program called Miracast has been launched To develop a simple point-to-point transmission of video content. It assumes various techniques that can be used in wireless data transmission, and completes these by specifying the content formats and the handshake of the devices involved.
The reality sobered
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Miracast standardizes how these devices get in contact with each other, how they maintain it, and how content needs to be processed so that the transfer works. The name Miracast may only be used for products that have been successfully tested for functionality by the Wi-Fi Alliance.
In the autumn of 2012, the norms were passed and it was possible to start. But until spring, you have hardly heard of the new standard, which should make Apple AirPlay competition and open on any device could work. Intel has promised that the proprietary WiDi technology, which is similar to Miracast and ultimately its model, would be made compatible with a driver update. And Google has announced that Miracast is an integral part of the Android 4.2 operating system.
Only when the products of the products for 2013 came from the big ones of the entertainment electronics came concrete life into the world of Miracast again. TV and smartphone manufacturers such as LG, Sony, Philips, Samsung and Panasonic showed how cell phone screens were conjured with only a few key operations on the new top TVs. However, not all manufacturers communicated the name Miracast. And in fact, it's not all that simple and easy to work with in the magical world of display content mirroring, as the Wi-Fi Alliance, editors and end-users can and can expect.
In order for the Miracast to work, it is necessary - as mentioned at the beginning - some building blocks of WLAN technology. The basis is the radio frequencies and bandwidths of the WLAN standard 802.11n in conjunction with the video acceleration WMM and the security technology WPA2 with the automatic key exchange of Wi-Fi Protected Setup. The actual connection does not need a router because the devices connect via Wi-Fi Direct. Then the protocols, codecs and containers define the content and communication data. The picture is encoded in H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC, whereby the resolutions range up to real Full HD. With the corresponding sound, uncompressed stereo is mandatory, but also on AA C and surround sound in AC3 the devices can communicate. This makes Miracast a form of transmission that is seriously serious.
At the moment, everyone is talking about mirroring a cell phone screen to a TV, but Miracast also allows you to stream movies - regardless of the weak resolution of a smartphone and even in both directions. And control commands can also be transmitted. This increases the choice of source and display devices as well as the number of conceivable application areas. So soon digital cameras and camcorders could beam their slideshows or movies with few clicks on modern TV devices. And a TV or Blu-ray player could be the source of the tablet image.
With so many options, we wanted to know what was already working and tested their compatibility with five TVs, four smartphones, three Blu-ray players, a tablet, a PC with Intel Wireless Display and a Miracast adapter. The extensive tests have shown that not every display has worked with any mobile phone - not yet.
The first shock was that not everything a smartphone screen can mirror on a TV screen, is also called Miracast. This is partly because it is an incompatible development, but partly because the manufacturer wants to use his own name for the technology for political reasons.
Thus many Sony TVs are certified, the Sony-Smartphones however (not yet). They even offer the extended functionality that you have to keep the mobile phone only on the remote control of a new top Sony TV, so that the device data keys over NFC (near field communication) exchange and begin to reflect. The Sony Xperia models, however, do not accept Philips TV because it does not offer HDCP content protection.
On LG's TV set, it works just as well as on the Netgear adapter. LG's Smartphone Optimus G could, in turn, connect to all TVs and Blu-ray players, including Philips.
Our test device Google Nexus 4 broke the connection to all devices. Since this model was used at the manufacturerdemos, we came to the conclusion after a long test that it was defective.
Samsung has long been based on a proprietary technology and was thus a pioneer in data traffic. Nevertheless, the Koreans have already certified some TVs for Miracast. Current TVs and BD players (not certified) theoretically combined with our Miracast phones, but the screens remained dark. A firmware update could fix this. With the Google Tablet Nexus 7 from Asus we searched the Miracast function in vain, although it runs under Android 4.2. It also has to join the hardware for it to function. Among the Miracast certifications (one can find the list of all the devices that have been certified so far at the Wi-Fi Alliance at www.wi-fi.org), many reference designs of the most important chip makers are already listed, but relatively few tablets. However, the chances are that future models will master the magic mirroring. Compatibility will improve anyway. Already during our three-week test, the end was more than the beginning - actually everything that was officially called Miracast.
Despite the rigid certification process, Miracast is still in its infancy. There are still many ways to discover. The whole thing could become a widely accepted standard, which brings a lot of fun into our living rooms.
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