Can I cast from my Google Pixel 2 XL to my Lenovo PC?
August 4, 2019 4:46 PM   Subscribe

Any thoughts on how to cast what's playing on my phone to my Lenovo laptop running Windows 10?

Essentially -- I can play Verizon Fios TV shows (that I've saved to my DVR) on my Android phone, using the Verizon Fios My TV app, but I would prefer to play them on my laptop. However, you can't, because you can't get that app on a PC (confirmed by Verizon tech person just now). So I'd like to cast the shows from the phone to my laptop. (Note: there doesn't seem to be "Miracast" on the phone or PC, so it can't be with that.)
posted by DMelanogaster to Computers & Internet (10 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Response by poster: Also: I'd prefer not to use more hardware such as Chromecast, if possible. thanks.
posted by DMelanogaster at 4:49 PM on August 4, 2019


Does this work? (scroll down to Mirror to a PC)
posted by bluecore at 5:11 PM on August 4, 2019


Response by poster: Unfortunately it does not. When I go to the Connect app, I just get a blue screen with a warning that content might not work right, and then it freezes. There is no Connect menu as shown on the page you link to. I'm also reading that what I want to do is (of course) really, really, unlikely to happen. Blecch.
posted by DMelanogaster at 5:22 PM on August 4, 2019


Response by poster: ugh, now downloaded the Remote Desktop app on my Android phone but it wants me to give them a login and password associated with my PC and there are none! It keeps telling me the passwords (I keep making them up) don't work. Everything is so complicated!
posted by DMelanogaster at 5:42 PM on August 4, 2019


AFAIK, a Remote Desktop app would allow you to mirror your PC desktop to your phone to control it from the phone, so probably not what you're looking to do.

I don't have an Android phone, but it's likely Verizon has gone out of it's way to make this difficult/impossible(?) in their TV app because they want to rent you Fios TV boxes and not have people do this, and Google is incentivized to help them make that difficult because they want Verizon's business.
posted by bluecore at 6:32 PM on August 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


When I had a need to do this kind of thing in school classrooms a few years back, I got excellent results at low cost using AirServer.
posted by flabdablet at 7:50 PM on August 4, 2019


You might also want to play with sticking youtube-dl on your PC and unleashing it against whatever stream URLs you can dig out from your My TV service. No idea whether it supports Verizon's stuff but it works super well against a whole bunch of sources that aren't YouTube and are supposed to be streaming-only; I regularly use it to collect stuff ahead of time from ABC iView, for example, because streaming is often horribly ugly at peak times in my town.
posted by flabdablet at 7:55 PM on August 4, 2019


One alternative option is to install a Android emulator like BlueStacks and run the streaming app on your PC.
posted by wongcorgi at 9:04 PM on August 4, 2019


Response by poster: Thank you, everyone.
posted by DMelanogaster at 4:43 AM on August 5, 2019


I'm guessing they have it specifically locked down - I've never had trouble mirroring with a physical cable.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:38 AM on August 5, 2019


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