I haven't looked at this at all to see if there are any changes, so this is based on the previous version of Chromecast.

The only bit of information that has to go through Google is a registration check to make sure that the application that's playing the media is a registered and valid Chromecast app. After that check the receiver loads whatever URL is registered for the app that's playing and receives a payload from the casting device with whatever information is needed.

So no actual streaming is proxied through Google or anything like that. Even the request to load the player interface come directly from the receiver device (once it's verified with Google that it should load said URL). There is a "default" player app that I've never checked to see whether that's saved onto the receiver itself or if it's loaded from Google, but either way that's just a thin slice of HTML and JS, not a stream going through Google.

Very little goes through google's servers, actually. "Casting" something from your phone/tablet to the chromecast is just sending it a url (and a timestamp if you were already watching on your phone). Then it streams locally.

So, for example, you can stream from Plex and not touch Google servers at all.

The Videostream plugin works beautifully. No plex-style on-demand encoding required. Just pick that 1080p mkv file or whatever and play, negligible CPU usage.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/videostream-for-go...

So then it runs everything through a browser on your computer, and you have to navigate the file system? Seems like you aren't understanding the appeal/use case of plex. I can use a nice clean interface on my TiVo, Phone, Computer, Roku, AppleTV, X-Box... And watch TV, unless I'm trying to watch something on the computer I don't have to get out a clunky computer to play anything.

Videostream has a basic media library as well, and you can choose stuff to play from your (Android) phone/tablet. Works quite well. I've used both Plex and Videostream and find myself using Videostream most of the time.

As far as I know, Chromecast supports handoff very well. I've used my Chromecast for things like Netflix, but my primary use-case is Videostream for direct streaming of local files.

But you can't just mirror a display to it, can you?

Yes you can - the UX isn't all that obvious though: Open Chrome, click on Cast extension, click on small arrow and select "Cast screen". It'll mirror your desktop to CC.

While you can do this, it means your device needs to be on (drawing power, running the radio, not on standby) for the whole stream, so the "normal", preferred model is for the content server to stream directly to the chromecast, and your phone is just the remote control for that process.

Exactly how this works is up to whoever writes the cast apps that you're using. APIs are over here: https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/developers

No. You can mirror a Chrome tab; that's the best you can do. And it doesn't work as smoothly as a purpose-built app.

You can mirror a whole display. It's an option in the Chromecast plugin for Chrome. It's labelled "experimental" but it actually works really well.

I use Plex to stream media from my computer to my TV, it works beautifully.

You stream from the content source straight to the device. Google is only involved with the content if you stream it from Google services (eg, YouTube, Play).

On Android I use an App called Localcast, it can play directly from your device or from a network attached storage, DLNA or a link to a resource on the web. It also does Cloud storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive etc.

So it would seem like handoff to the Chromecast works really well. My TV supports Miracast and that does not work as well as the Chromecast does.

I stream local content from Ubuntu with stream2chromecast.py - https://github.com/Pat-Carter/stream2chromecast