MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: Just got Chromecast

> > The chromecast fixed that right up, though. Primarily because you can send it video
> > streams a little more modern than mpeg2. So if your PC is up to it you can compress
> > the video a bit more without losing quality.
>
>
> Is that really how it works? I imagine it just takes simple commands from an
> iphone/computer and then has the data stream come straight from the modem/wireless
> router straight to the chromecast.

I probably didn't explain that very well. The Chromecast works pretty much how you describe.

But when I want to use DLNA streaming to stream my own stuff from my PC then there is more to worry about. The PS3 AFAIK only handles mpeg2 video this way. But I have a million TV shows on my PC encoded with a bunch of different CODECS. So you can't just feed these to the PS3 because it will just choke on anything it doesn't understand. So you run software on your PC that transcodes the video (to MPEG2) in real time whenever you want to play something on the PS3.

But MPEG2 isn't very good for compression compared to MPEG4 AVC or other advanced codecs. So reasonable quality needs high bitrates and then that needs to go across the network when streaming. So the fact that the PS3 requires MPEG2 for DLNA streaming was a problem for my crappy network when streaming my own stuff. This means fuck-all as far as netflix or youtube or anything else goes. Those apps can send and decode whatever video formats they want to.

The Chromecast on the other hand, has more codec compatibility. So when streaming video over the local network, it doesn't have to be in the archaic MPEG2 format. So I can send video with lower bitrates and with higher quality without overloading my crappy wifi. Again, this also means fuck-all as far as streaming Neflix/Youtube/Whatever over the internet goes.