[PhilSitch]

Still a relative Newbie but getting up to speed and have been comparing KODI to Plex.
I am surprised that KODI has not seen fit to incorporate a Cast facility into its Player, like that in the Plex Player - to avoid the need to utilise External Players and, better still, to incorporate a transcode facility to make streams suitable for Chromecast.

Could that go on the wish-list for a future version please.

[nickr]

Many people have asked. Not going to happen. Nor should it. Plug your kodi machine into your TV with your HDMI cable. No casting needed.

[PhilSitch]

Thanks for speedy response but rather puzzled by the tone of it. I get the impression that I have touched a sore spot ?
Displaying on a large TV is a natural thing to want to do.
Sure, one can do this from some mobile devices but others have no HDMI output for a cable so the only route then is by casting.
I don't understand the apparent objection to an inbuilt cast function.
I find the Plex one very useful

[Koying]

1) Kodi is meant to be run on a TV.
2) Cast has a very limited set of codecs. It's basically a chrome browser
3) Cast is meant for cloud streams, really

Bottom-line: Cast works fine with Plex because it has a central server with transcoding, which is not applicable to Kodi

There are 3rd party apps doing it though (Yatse, BubbleUpnp, ...)

[PhilSitch]

Thanks for further comment. Apologies if I am being thick in understanding this.

You say "1) Kodi is meant to be run on a TV."

My understanding is that Kodi can be run on a number of platforms, e.g. Kodi Set-top Boxes, Windows PCs, Android Mobile Devices etc.

A normal TV however can not "run" anything since it is not a computer. The nearest thing I can think of which might resemble "running" on a TV is on a Firestick plugged into a TV. I have no experience of this but guess that any display is then directly on the TV.

However, I would guess that running on a mobile device is very common in which case my previous comments about casting to a TV are very relevant.

[Koying]

Yeah, I meant "displayed" on a TV, via an attached htpc/box/stick of any kind.
For your information, there are android TV that actually run Kodi, though

[FXB78]

Why would you even want to use a mobile phone screen to navigate around Kodi & cast it to your screen when you can spend a small amount of money & buy a box which sits under your TV & is controlled by a Remote Control? Not to mention the phone will be compromised from it's actual function of making and receiving calls. Makes no sense to me

[PhilSitch]

I think I said "Mobile Devices", which includes Tablets as well as Phones.
Whilst a small phone screen is, I agree, small for navigating round Kodi, a much bigger Tablet screen is ideal and, I find, very convenient for this purpose.
My (Hudl) Tablet does have an HDMI output but I guess not all tablets do and so users would need to cast.

[Koying]

Note that Kodi supports upnp, which is basically the "standard" way to cast, or was before Apple and Google decided to come with their own proprietary protocols (http://kodi.wiki/view/UPnP/Client)
Many (most?) smart TV support upnp those days...

[jjd-uk]

This will work to any TV with a UPnP player that supports the file format to be played.



or just get a RPi.

[Luke M]

So to summarize:
(1) Kodi will never support casting
(2) Kodi already supports casting
:-)

[nickr]

It doesn't support Chromecast. It supports playing on another instance of Kodi. It supports playing YouTube videos from an Android phone with kore or yatse installed.

[jjd-uk]

Doesn't have to be another instance of Kodi, with detection of remote UPnP players enabled it should pick up any UPnP device under Play Using.

[nickr]

Yes and the trouble with upnp is that most devices only play a limited number of formats and codecs. It just turns out to be annoying.

[jjd-uk]

Sure, just making clear it maybe an option is you are fortunate to a TV which supports a lot of formats over UPnP, or you may even have another device supporting UPnP already connected to the TV such as Xbox One.