Using chromecast or phone for car's HDMI

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Tozmo

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Mar 21, 2012
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This is a bizarre situation that crosses multiple subforums. It's part home theater, part mobile computing, part smartphone, part small form factor.
I have a bunch of wifi "burner" phones (phones that run android, and have no SIM card so that they function as an Android "iPod touch" in essence).

The "best" one I have is a Moto E, and then I have a slew of ZTE Zingers. All run Android KitKat and have SD card capability.

I just got a new minivan that has a rear DVD player built in; and the discs are inserted from the front driver console. As far as I can tell, it will only read true DVD Video, not avi/mpeg burned onto a dvd as data.

Onto my situation: the third row of the minivan has an HDMI and composite in's which will play to the second row screen. If I want to play compressed movies in the car, I will need to input it through the back. I'm weighing my options:

1) Get a micro USB to HDMI cable and run video through a burner phone (equipped with SD card); use Plex to control what is playing from the front seat via whatever (real phone, ipad, etc).
2) Chromecast or Fire Stick into the rear HDMI, and fling from one of the burner phones from the front seat. The burner phone can have an app that would create a wifi environment in the car, but I don't know how practical it is to transmit video data in this way. I suppose it depends on the Chromecast buffer/cache

Opinions? Is there a third option that I didn't think of? I have a Fire TV, but not the stick. I have plenty of extra routers and wifi phones and external hard drives as anyone on this forum should.
 
You could get a travel router to host the wi-fi. This would unburden the burner phones a bit. Also they generally have a usb port so you can put your source material on it and then cast with Bubble UPnP to the Chromecast. I've seen travel routers for less than $20. Also the Chromecast should stream directly from the USB I believe not requiring the phone after kickoff. The only thing I don't know off-hand is if the Chromecast needs to phone to the Google Mothership. i think first configuring it, it might need the internet.

If you have burner phones to spare, you could give a couple kids their own phone and have them pull content individually. Add earphones and you have peace and quiet in the car.
 
In the car with the family I use the hotspot from my phone, repeated by the Wi-Fi Stor which normally has a 2TB external drive connected to it with our media.

The wife and kid connect their tablets/laptops to the wireless network from the Wi-Fi store and it's a done deal.

On trips there is the added bonus of having an SD card slot for yanking pics/video from the cameras. (as long as you aren't in too much of a hurry, it's not fast)

Works good.

~RF
 
My kids are 2.5 years and 1.5 years, they're too small to hold or control things.

I'm intrigued by using a travel router that has USB built in, but then if I connect a burner to the HDMI port by USB -> HDMI, I would run into a battery problem on the burner phone. The phones don't have a dedicated miniHDMI out, so the charging port would be occupied by the HDMI interface.

In 2-3 years, this won't be a problem I hope. We only go on long trips a few times a year where this is applicable
EDIT:
As a preliminary update, the cheap burner phones (including the Moto E) do not support MHL explicitly in their online descriptions. Therefore I anticipate I am going to buy a travel router and use my Fire TV (box). The Fire TV is awesome for what it can do, and I suppose this just adds more to its utility
 
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Just ran across this..

...might do the trick for you on the cheap(ish)

Buffalo Technologies WMR-300 AirStation N300 Wireless Travel Router

19.99 today on Woot! (can't post link)

Or just chop the wall wart off an old WRT-54G w/ DD-WRT or whatever and plug it into your 12V outlet. (I don't suppose they are called cigarette lighters anymore)

Good luck!

I was just in a similar situation trying to figure out the A/V situation in my vehicle. (main goal was to be able to play FLAC files & be able to stream Amazon/Netflix for the wife and kid.)

~rf
 
Tozmo said:
I'm intrigued by using a travel router that has USB built in, but then if I connect a burner to the HDMI port by USB -> HDMI, I would run into a battery problem on the burner phone. The phones don't have a dedicated miniHDMI out, so the charging port would be occupied by the HDMI interface.
Click to expand...

There's two different technologies going on for usb -> hdmi.
1: MHL which requires some kind of power to the dongle and will charge the phone.
2: Slimport, which doesn't require power to the dongle but will still accept it to charge the phone.

Note: a given device will speak one of those two, not both. You'll have to find out which one you need.
 
FnordMan said:
There's two different technologies going on for usb -> hdmi.
1: MHL which requires some kind of power to the dongle and will charge the phone.
2: Slimport, which doesn't require power to the dongle but will still accept it to charge the phone.

Note: a given device will speak one of those two, not both. You'll have to find out which one you need.
Click to expand...

Thanks, and what I have found is that these are not explicitly listed as a feature for my cheap phones, so that answers that.

My current plan will be to put my fire tv in the back and use a burner as the wifi hotspot. I can stick mount a usb drive. Will still consider a travel router, but that would only really provide an extra usb drive. Long term the travel router will be the way to go because it will provide media for anyone's devices
 
As opposed to a Chromecast stick, you could use an Android stick and more or less cast to that. PlayTo or Twonky Beam could be used as your casting agent from your phone. But then I believe they become part of the circuit which is good and bad, they eat up bandwidth on wifi but you retain pause/play control. Chomecast remote control gets disconnected after 10-20 minutes and you have to navigate back to regain control.
 
I leave for Florida on Monday, when I return I'll give a full detail on how this played out.

I bought this:
HooToo

That has a usb dlna built in, runs off USB. The HooToo system is linux based.
I am going to put a USB hub in the car. The mini router will run off this, and will have a USB thumb drive connected mostly for music.
The FireTV will go into the rear HDMI in. I will stickmount a 64gb thumb drive and primarily use a phone or ipad from the front seat to control XBMC FireTV. The front seat will also have a burner with SD card that I can allcast to the FireTV.

It's probably too complicated, and my wife is giving me "the look" because it's easier just to pump physical dvd's from the front console.

My biggest concern is the wear on the FireTV and usb drives from starting and turning off the car.
The Honda engineers did a screwy thing of having the HDMI port on the third row passenger side, and the power and RCA in's on the third row driver side. Fire Stick would be an option, but I would have to run a cable across to the power side. Plus Fire stick would need xbmc to make full use of this setup I think
 
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bebble said:
Can I know what do you get for the third row of your minivan?
Click to expand...

In regards to what?
The power supply side has a two prong single outlet to three outlet adapter. Plugged into this is an anker hub that had USB ports. In one port sits the hootoo router. The hootoo is powered by usb, so the anker could go away and I could just use a phone charger connector. On the opposite side in the rear is the hdmi port. The fire tv plugs in here, its power to the opposite side three way adapter.

The fire tv has a usb stick with a lot of movies. The hootoo hub does not have a usb stick connected because the front console has all inputs I need for front music.

In the front seat I have a burner phone and my real phone plugged into a cigarette lighter. Both can remotely control xbmc on the fire tv. The challenge for the front passenger is to navigate the fire tv to kodi because I do not have it set as autostart when the fire is first turned on.

My next challenge is to find an android app that can stream movies from a network share AND have its screen off, so the front seat can listen to video taped lectures.
I could also use an apple app that does the same since I have a screen shattered but still operable iPod touch
 
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