Chromecast (2020), with Android TV - Cast and DLNA question

[odin]

So I got this device Chromecast with Android TV (2020), and it's pretty good unfortunately it still has bad audio support for 'casting' so to cast to the device it usually needs to transcode some video audio into a compatible format and the chromecast ultra profile works fine for most cast tasks..........

However this chromcast is a huge upgrade since it also has the full Android TV (android 10) operating system so I can use apps like Kodi, Mx player, Mezzmo which support most audio / video configurations so transcoding is not usually required when using these apps, which creates a dilemma for me, since it will use the same Mezzmo profile (ChromeCast Ultra) for all operations (ie it will transcode to hls format for every player.).

So I guess my question would be would it be possible to create a profile to detect when something is 'Cast' and enable transcoding if needed, and also Detect when something is being played to DLNA / DMR / UPNP (like kodi, mezzmo, bubbleupnp...etc) and disable the cast transcode function? (or something similar)

[Peter]

Mezzmo identifies devices by IP address and MAC so if the cast component of the device has the same IP and MAC as the Android TV part then it can only use one device profile. Possibly you could disable transcoding on the device and pre-transcode the files you want to cast so that all other files will play without transcoding android TV.

It may be possible to match containers to the cast or Android TV component using the User Agent in the request as the Web access profile does this for different browsers. You will need to enable diagnostic logging then cast a file to the device and then play a file from Android TV on the device to then compare the User Agents in the logs.

Something else to note is that the Mezzmo Android app supports Play To functionality so you can use this instead of casting to avoid transcoding as the files will play in the Mezzmo Video Player on the device.

[odin]

Mezzmo identifies devices by IP address and MAC so if the cast component of the device has the same IP and MAC as the Android TV part then it can only use one device profile. Possibly you could disable transcoding on the device and pre-transcode the files you want to cast so that all other files will play without transcoding android TV.

It may be possible to match containers to the cast or Android TV component using the User Agent in the request as the Web access profile does this for different browsers. You will need to enable diagnostic logging then cast a file to the device and then play a file from Android TV on the device to then compare the User Agents in the logs.

Something else to note is that the Mezzmo Android app supports Play To functionality so you can use this instead of casting to avoid transcoding as the files will play in the Mezzmo Video Player on the device.

Awesome I think this worked, I set the useragent to redsonic which is what X-User-Agent: redsonic showed when casting, so I added <endorsement>redsonic</endorsement> to all the encoding profiles in chromecastultra and it seems to work so when I cast to chromecast it seems to encode to hls and when I play to kodi or other renderers (dlna) it seems to play directly I will test more and see if I run into any problems.

[Peter]

Excellent, glad to hear it is working.

[odin]

another quick question, I have mezzmo which I got through the amazon app store, but on Android TV it doesn't show the app icon on the native launcher, I tried the mezzmo trial from google play store and the icon showed up so not sure why the amazon one has this issue, I bought it on amazon so kinda stuck using that version... any ideas would be great thanks.

[Peter]

Do you have the Amazon App store installed on the Android TV? Only apps purchased through an app store appear on the native launcher.

[odin]

Yeah I have the amazon app store installed, although I don't think it's made for android tv since it runs in portrait mode but i got it working somehow :),
I can see the Mezzmo app if I use a program like Mix-Apps where it lists standard android applications along with android tv ones, I also tried to sideload it and same result.

besides for the icon/launcher issue, the app works fine, it seems to function identical to the GP android tv version.