AirParrot Airplay mirroring (a quick and nasty review)

Lurchorama

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With both an nVidia Shield, an Asus VivoTab Smart (running 8.1), a couple of Android tablets, and my Macbook Pro in residence in my house I wanted to find a way of streaming a complete 'desktop' to the TV (an older 50" Plasma).
My first thought was Miracast. So down to the shops I trotted and came home with a Netgear Push2TV.
I could go through all the ups and downs I took with this, but nutshell version: other than the Shiled - it just doesnt work.
The nVidia Shield 'just worked' but was too laggy to play games (what else would you use a shield for?)
My Asus VivoTab found the Netgear but just kept dropping just as it was about to connect
The Samsung Note 8.0 again found it; but kept giving HDCP Auth errors because Samsung have decided to cripple its Allshare Cast so it wont work 'thru' another device (eg: Amp > TV)
The Samsung Tab2 10.1 seems to have Allshare Cast removed altogether even tho 4.2.2 should support it
And my Macbook Pro - I'd given up by this point....

However in my trials I did spot an app call AirParrot (free trial, $10 after). So this morning on the way to work I picked up an Apple TV (Gen 3).
Plugged into the TV, connected it to the Uni's Wifi, updated it, yadda yadda yadda...
But with our locked down WiFi, it was never going to work. So I pulled out an old DLink AP and configured a quick network (no internet access) and connected the ATV and the VivoTab to it (after downloading and installing AirParrot).
AirParrot - AirPlay your Mac or PC's screen to Apple TV

With AirParrot working; the VivoTab instantly found the ATV and 'just worked'. It was a bit laggy, but I mostly put this down to the AP being a pretty old/slow one.

I then directly (ethernet) hooked up my Macbook and it too 'just worked' (although thats not a surprise).
There also seems to be a few Android apps available to spit media out to the ATV, but I ran out of time to test that - but will soon and report back.
The only WP app I've found is Nokia's PlayTo; however it looks like it doesnt support ATV :(

More to follow.

- Lurch
 

theefman

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What firmware version was your Netgear? There are videos showing the PTV3000 working fine with a surface pro so the Vivotab problems may be due to the Atom architecture and drivers.
 

Goku1982jason

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I use the net gear push2tv with my Samsung ativ 700t pro in my class. Haven't had any problems at all. Fast enough to give my presentations and steam video at a full 1080p. Although the Samsung does have the Intel WiDi built in so maybe that's what makes it work better?
 

Lurchorama

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So it seems my 'couple of days of mucking around' might have gotten some traction at work (I'm an IT manager at a University)

We have a building called the Inspire Centre with is aimed at technology in education and teaching. We're going to set up a couple of the studios with ATV's and a couple of iPads and Surfaces (probably something cheap and then a Surface 2 Pro when they come out) and a few AirParrot licenses.
 

Lurchorama

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It seems AirParrot is 'broken' at least on a Surface Pro 2.
Connecting to the ATV is fine; the max resolution I can get it to project at is 1280x760. Which means no Metro apps will launch as the minimum vertical resolution for them to work seems to be 768 :(

In saying that I had another go at the Push2TV and it worked like a charm with the Surface 2 Pro; but nada still with the Asus VivoBook or VivoTab.

So I'm still no closer in find a 'universal' solution to wireless mirroring......
 

Lurchorama

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HAA-ZZAH!!

Instead of explaining again; here is a copy/paste of what I just sent to the AirParrot developers...

Dustin,

Further to my last email…

I wanted to still persist using Airparrot to stream to an Apple TV. We’ve also been playing with Miracast; however we’ve found that from a ‘transmitting’ perspective, it’s even more limiting than Air play due to it’s hardware requirements etc.

It was actually a post on WPCentral that gave me an idea. We were talking about the ‘fuzziness’ of certain applications on the new Surface Pro 2 and it was a post by a user named Cleavitt76 who gave me the idea. He explained about the ‘scaling’ Windows 8 uses on the new Surface to enlarge the old fashioned desktop to make it usable (on a 10” screen, using touch, the really high resolution of the Pro makes it unusable because everything is tiny)
Here is the post:
http://forums.windowscentral.com/mi...rrent-issues-surface-pro-2-a.html#post2189980

I though about this and realised ‘Hang on a sec, Airparrot is a ‘desktop app’, so it’s probably trying to scale’. So I went in and turned off the desktop scaling as Cleavitt76 said and *Ding* AirParrot worked like a charm!!

Perhaps this is something you can pass on to your developers for future reference for the next update?
I can’t help but think that if your application can bring this functionality to Windows tablets; it would really make a perfect (and sellable :) ) solution for Education, Presentations, and a whole raft of other things!!

- Jase

Well done to Cleavitt76!!!
 

Angelo C

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I like the idea of wireless but this particular one is too lagging for gaming. (Republic of Gamers laptop to Sharp Aquos via Apple TV). :crying:
 

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