Please make your products work with URLs

Re:Please make your products work with URLs by pba on Monday January 13, 2020 @03:45PM (#22038367)

Maybe this was the whole point of the author's post.. but I'm fairly certain the reason the author's use case is not easily workable is because the OEMs mentioned are deliberately discouraging the ability to play anything that is not inside some sort of DRM control. They don't want you to just be able to play any URL. Its not a technical problem, its a content management problem.

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Re:Please make your products work with URLs by valiant55 on Monday January 13, 2020 @04:00PM (#22038517)

When I first bought a Chromecast I was disappointed how much of a pain it was to play content I already had on my computer. I shouldn't have to spin up a Plex server just to get acceptable streaming capabilities.

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Re:Please make your products work with URLs by lozaning on Monday January 13, 2020 @04:23PM (#22038766)

The VideoStream chrome plugin is spectacular for this. Of all the chrome plugins I've installed over the years, this is still the only one I continue to donate towards.

https://getvideostream.com/

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Re:Please make your products work with URLs by psanford on Monday January 13, 2020 @04:23PM (#22038765)

These days you can cast with VLC which makes this much easier.

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Re:Please make your products work with URLs by odensc on Monday January 13, 2020 @07:00PM (#22040204)

You can do this natively with Chrome. Just go to the overflow menu in the top right > Cast... > Sources > Cast file.

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Re:Please make your products work with URLs by babypuncher on Monday January 13, 2020 @04:16PM (#22038676)

AirPlay doesn't have this design philosophy and wouldn't have given this user a problem. Unfortunately AirPlay itself is proprietary and only supported by Apple devices and some TVs.

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Re:Please make your products work with URLs by mbreese on Monday January 13, 2020 @04:37PM (#22038932)

You know, I was going to reply that the AppleTV isn't a good comparison here because they specifically wanted something that worked with URLs.

But then I thought about it, and the URL thing is a red herring. That's not what they really want -- that's an implementation detail. What they really want is the ability to play something from their local server on their TV. This is totally do-able in the Apple eco-system. The URL thing is exactly what you don't want. Who wants to type a URL into their TV using their phone as a virtual keyboard or not? (Which the AppleTV + iPhone combo does this great too...)

The best option is where you could "cast" any video/media you're watching on a phone or computer up to a TV. The AppleTV + iPhone (or Mac) combo does this great.

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Re:Please make your products work with URLs by phcordner on Monday January 13, 2020 @04:56PM (#22039156)

AppleTV + iPhone + VLC iOS app will give you the URL option too. I did this to watch Terrace House Boys x Girls Next Door when I ran out of Netflix episodes.

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Re:Please make your products work with URLs by comex on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @03:18AM (#22042836)

There’s also a VLC app for Apple TV, no need for a phone at all (although you’ll probably want the phone remote to enter the URL).

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Re:Please make your products work with URLs by SamBam on Monday January 13, 2020 @04:33PM (#22038895)

Chromecast allows you to display any arbitrary url, no?

Also, just to understand, what does Roku get out of blocking your ability to potentially see non-DRM content? Is Neflix going to pull their app if Roku starts displaying urls?

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