Belkin has launched its new Miracast Video Adapter designed to mirror your Android screen onto your HDTV wirelessly. The small adapter plugs directly into your TV’s HDMI port and turns it into an external video display without connecting a physical cable from your device to the TV. Once connected, you can stream any content on your device including movies, TV shows, photos, video clips, games or apps, directly to your HDTV in full 1080p resolution without wires.
You might be wondering how the Miracast differs from Google’s Chromecast adapter. Chromecast only works with certain apps like YouTube, Google Play, Netflix, Hulu and others. It requires special software hooks in the apps that you want to stream from your Android device to your TV. For example, when you go into YouTube on your phone, you have to press the Chromecast button to play a video. Then instead of seeing it play on your phone, it plays on the TV that has the Chromecast attached to the HDMI port. At the same time, the phone’s interface turns into a remote with controls for video playback. The Miracast Adapter just mirrors everything you see on the Android screen to the HDTV.
The Miracast Video Adapter is available directly from Belkin for $79.99.
Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
Hmm, i wonder how well this really works. I’m sure that when you stream video (like Netflix) to your phone, it is not at a resolution that would look good on a large TV. Chromecast avoids this problem by having the dongle download the content directly, at the proper resolution for the display. Miracast, though, if it is just mirroring, sounds like it might send crappy phone resolution to the TV?
I think android sends out higher resolution anyway when it sends to an external display (I know mine has developer options for both a 1080p external AND a 720p external at the same time), and for some modern phones (Xperia Z/ZL, Galaxy S4, HTC one, others..) they display at 1080p anyway, so there’d be no resolution scaling either way unless available bandwidth can’t handle it.
my guesses anyway.
Belkin has offered to send me one to review. So I’ll give you some more info on it as soon as I am able to try it.
Being that it is a Belkin product, it guaranteed to stop working as soon as you set it up!
i tried the LG built in miracast with my galaxy note 3, and it lagged so much that cant be able to play games with it.