Casting using Bitmovin Player onto FireTV

Support
1

Hi,

I am testing an android app that’s created out of this:

I can successfully cast on ChromeCast, but the cast icon doesn’t come for FireTV.

Is there a specific code that I am missing to implement here?

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Vivek.

2

Hi Vivek,

Thanks for checking out BasicCastingKotlin sample. As you found out it works out of the box for devices that support Google cast protocol for example Google Chromecast device.

But FireTV does support Google cast protocol so cannot be used for casting from Bitmovin player. The receiver device needs to implement Googlecast protocol in-order for casting to work. Hope this information is helpful.

Thanks and Regards,
Lucky Goyal

3

Ok Thanks Lucky, Is there any way to implement Casting onto FireTV? Similar to what Youtube and Netflix supports?

We’re also hoping to Cast it to SmartTV’s (Chrome Cast and Non-Chrome Cast based) .

4

The default Chromecasting feature uses Web based cast receiver which works on devices which support Google cast natively and for which Bitmovin provides a sample reference CAF receiver.

An alternative mechanism for supporting casting on AndroidTV based devices is to build Android TV receiver application as documented by Google.

You may use Google tutorials and samples to build Android TV receiver application and test with Bitmovin cast sender.

5

Thanks Lucky for your feedback! Do you mean that implementing Android TV receive application will also support casting content to FireTV?

We’re looking to cast to Smart Tv’s (LG, Samsung, Sony), Airplay, Roku TV, ChromeCast (which works) and FireTV. Is it technically feasbile? What would be the best approach.

Thank you in advance.

6

Android TV receiver application is required to support casting feature on AndroidTV based devices. We do not have an example of this working on FireTV so I will be skeptical to confirm that but this seems to be the only way to support it on Android based receivers and FireTV is also based on Android.

Regarding other TV platforms

  • Smart Tv’s (LG, Samsung, Sony) :
    • LG uses WebOS and Samsung uses Tizen OS, so I do not think it is possible to use Google cast to cast on such devices.
    • Sony TVs are based on AndroidTV so using Android TV receiver should be possible. But same as FireTV, this needs to be tested.
  • Airplay : I assume you are referring to AppleTV. This does not support Google cast but only Airplay. Airplay can only be used from Apple devices(iOS/iPadOS) and Safari browser.
  • Roku TV : This also does not support Google casting. Some recent Roku models have added Airplay support, although it may work but this is not officially supported by Bitmovin iOS SDK.

I understand your question is specific to cast feature, but to avoid any confusion let me clarify that you can build player applications on all above platforms using Bitmovin player SDKs. But casting via Google cast or Airplay is not supported by all platforms.

It would be interesting to know if you are aware of possibility to using Google casting or Airplay on sender and receiver device platforms which do not support these natively. Hope this answer helps.

Thanks and Regards,
Lucky Goyal

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