I’m curious what people’s thoughts are about Matter. This is the first I’m hearing of it.
I’ve been trying to find a way to replace my old Chromecast Ultra (because Google), but I really like having that little cast button show up in apps, even on the phones of guests. But from what I can tell, Google killed this functionality on open alternatives (ex. Raspicast) with a lockdown to the Chromecast spec.
I’m hopeful that Matter could be a way to have my devices cast streams to each other in a standardized way that wouldn’t require me to rely on Google/Apple/Amazon/etc. Maybe even Newpipe could get in on the action?
I don’t know how it will work, or if this “Connected Standards Alliance” (which is apparently used to be the ZigBee Alliance, also news to me) will still have to greenlight specific devices despite it being “open”, which would rule out Newpipe. I would assume the official YouTube apps will be particularly resistant to supporting Matter.
Anyone have any experience here? Has anyone else successfully replaced their media device with something open that also works with the casting button in apps?
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This is really interesting and an absolute game changer. Hopefully it kills Chromecast. Like others, I only knew of Matter as a home automation consortium, that they’ve worked out a casting open standard and will be pushing that is amazing. I look forward to seeing it adopted. That said, apparently Matter certification is expensive and everything I’ve seen using Thread thus far drops connection a lot so it may take a while.
I’ve seen Thread mentioned twice so far, but I don’t think I’ve heard of it, and apparently a name like that makes it impossible to find any information about it. Do you have a link plz?
Sure thing: https://www.threadgroup.org/What-is-Thread/Thread-Benefits
Basically Matter over Thread is the new Zigbee.
What’s wrong with miracast? Almost every device sold these days has some kind of radio, but no way to talk to each other. Releasing a new standard every few years won’t help much.
I don’t know the specifics of Miracast, but my impression was that it is specifically used to cast a video stream from one device to another device. That is sometimes useful, but not what I typically use my Chromecast for.
The most useful feature of my Chromecast is the ability to be logged into Plex/Netflix/HBO/Spotify/YouTube/etc on my (or my guest’s) mobile device, and effectively send a link and a (probably ephemeral) token to the Chromecast so that it can stream directly from the server to the Chromecast without my mobile device spending battery power and bandwidth being a middle-man.
And I assume the difficult part here is down to copyright reasons. Most of those streaming sites already limit the number of devices you can permit to stream content (which sucks, but is besides the point), so my impression is that they need to have some kind of under-the-table agreement with the Chromecast/Roku/Firestick/Apple TV/etc. folks to ensure that the device will correctly validate the credentials, not save any of the content, and properly dispose of everything when it’s done. And I assume Google has similar talks about when a device on the network is allowed to be listed as a casting device to apps.
Does Miracast already handle this?
Isn’t Miracast for sending video data? The thing I like about Chromecast is that the phone or remote app just tells the Chromecast where to load the media directly from, and then only sends playback control commands. That makes it a lot lighter resource wise because you don’t need to proxy the stream through a device like a phone that wants to go to sleep to save battery.
The company says services like Plex, Pluto TV, Sling TV, Starz, and ZDF will introduce support later this year.
I always had the impression that plex was really slow when it comes to implementing new features. I’m definitely looking forward to a chromecast alternative though. Being locked into googles DNS gives me problems due to it prohibiting streaming from my local server via hostname.
I really hope it will be implemented in Jellyfin as well since I can’t get my installation to work with Chromecast at all (most likely again due to the DNS issue)
Being locked into googles DNS gives me problems
I solved that by adding an 8.8.8.8 ip to my pihole interface. Because of how TCP/IP works, this has the fewest hops and is, therefore, the one to be used. I’m blocking all outbound DNS traffic for good measure.
By adding do you mean blocking it in pi-hole or somehow redirecting it to your pi-hole dns server?
I currently have it blocked in my router and can confirm this by trying to ping 8.8.8.8 without any response. If you mean redirecting to your pi-hole I would really like to know how to do it
I didn’t add it to any lists, but to the network interface itself. You know the output of
ip a? The one pihole listens on (wg0in my case, because wireguard) has something like, say,10.0.0.1, but also8.8.8.8. So when a DNS packet is spit out by chromecast to go to 8.8.8.8 UDP port 53 - my pihole happily answers that request. You could also do a separate unbound instance on a new virtual interface with a quad8 ip and just forward everything to pihole, if you fancy.
“Matter Casting” is not a very catchy name
Also Matter is the smart home interop standard. Seems close enough for some confusion in what Matter compatible means on a device.
It’s the same Matter afaik, but yeah, I had forgotten about the interop standard and originally thought “Matter” was specific to this casting spec.
Oh right, that makes sense. I was only thinking of Matter as serving low bandwidth devices but it also runs over WiFi and ethernet so I guess it can do video for security cameras etc. and evidently Casting audio and video also.
Also interested in what people are saying here. I’ve started leaning towards matter/threads with home automation as I build out tech
I’m in the market for a new TV and thought I’d go the dumb TV + Raspberry Pi route. Little bummed Google mettled with casting if it doesn’t work, but in hindsight I’ve only used it twice.
I hope to see Jellyfin support this too (Plex is already getting support apparently) and hopefully it will work desktop-to-desktop and not just between streaming devices and phones.
Although it’s probably not massively needed as Jellyfin can already control remote devices.
If something could cast from one of my devices to another of my devices using the cast button, that’s all I want. I can strap one of those devices to my TV and be golden.
Check out Fcast
This looks neat, though sounds like only the grayjay/futo app can cast to it, and I doubt any official streaming app would natively adopt it. Assuming it’s not just casting a video feed from your phone, my guess as to how it works is, it just copies the relevant cookies over to the fcast device where it can just pretend to be your phone as far as the server is concerned.
This would be fine if it supports all the apps I use, and I’m the only one ever casting, but I don’t want to force guests to install and configure another middleware app to just to cast stuff. My hope is that Matter will somehow solve these, but I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up.
I should try setting up fcast either way though, see how it goes. Thanks.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System IP Internet Protocol Plex Brand of media server package TCP Transmission Control Protocol, most often over IP Zigbee Wireless mesh network for low-power devices
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 13 acronyms.
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