August 30, 2013 | Interests, Technical
It’s interesting because I’ve encountered this same issue for many years but never really put too much thought behind it. In order to show friends and family photos of my latest vacation I’d connect a cord between my camera and TV or camera and computer. In order to show a powerpoint at work or school, I’d be connecting my laptop to a projector via a cord of some sort – lol if you have a macbook like I do, you’ll also need some sort of convertor cable. What if you wanted to listen to music on your laptop? Well I just used my laptop to listen to my music – but wouldn’t it be cool if I could use my LCD TV’s speakers to blast the sound? What if all this could be done in a snap of a finger, without any cords at all, with any device running on any platform?
This all started a few days ago, I was watching a YouTube video with a family member on my laptop and they asked me if we could hook up my laptop to the TV. Doing some further digging into this there were three options out there for me. Just an aside, I have a mid 2010 macbook pro.
AppleTV would cost around $110 and I would also need an HDMI cable (~$10) to connect it to my LCD. Apparently because I have a mid 2010 macbook pro, AirPlay is not supported for my device. This feature would allow me to mirror my laptop screen on my LCD through AppleTV. In order to make this happen I would need another software called AirParrot (~$10 for one licence) that allows Apple laptops older then 2011 to do this. Once all this is in place I can wirelessly share my laptop’s screen with my TV. I could also directly view YouTube videos from AppleTV, however it’s limited to a number of applications that Apple allows you to access – feels somewhat restrictive.
Now this is super cool, using a Raspberry Pi to create a media centre similar to AppleTV. A Raspberry Pi is a miniature computer that costs about $35 and there are plenty of resources out that show you how to make it into a media centre. You’ll also need a number of other components to make it happen like:
Like AppleTV there are a number of applications you can run on it, including YouTube. I’m still exploring how to share my screen wirelessly with the RaspberryPi + LCD. Feels like there is no support for that ability at this time. Although it’s super cool, it doesn’t allow me to view applications from my computer on my LCD wirelessly. I likely need to do a little more digging into this to find the answer. Cost wise, the final solution would be similar to an AppleTV, but there is the added bonus of building it yourself if you have the time :P.
All in all, both the AppleTV and the Raspberry Pi media centre are extravagant solutions for what I really want to accomplish – viewing applications I’m running on my laptop on my LCD TV. And I want the freedom to choose what it is. Well, I ended up just ordering a 25 ft HDMI cable ($20) and a mini displayport to HDMI converter cable ($15) on Amazon. I’m going to directly hook my laptop up to my LCD at a faction of the cost of these two alternatives. It does what I want, but it’s not wireless of course.
But to go back to the initial question – What if you could instantly share media across multiple devices in your home? What if all this could be done in a snap of a finger, without any cords – all wirelessly, with any device running on any platform? It’s an interesting problem to solve and would benefit a lot of people. It would be even more awesome if it could be done with existing devices we have at home today.