Streaming from Desktop PC to TV

[Pink Gregory]

So current setup for our TV is just a Roku with my PC sat next to it so I can set it up with just an HDMI cable if I need to.

However situation is that we're ideally moving house soon, and the idea is the Desktop/Monitor would go upstairs and the TV/Roku would be downstairs.

This would be fine but there are a few non-app things we like to use on the regular on the PC (Dailymotion/BFI Player/Nextup/Vimeo) and also Roku doesn't have a Youtube app.

So ideally what I'd like to be able to do is stream the PC to the TV in another room, preferably without it only working through apps, so just the display and sound coming out of the TV.  If there's some way that I could also control the PC from another room that'd be great, but it's not essential.

I don't think our TV is smart but I'm pretty sure you can get a USB thing for it that would make it so, although it's at least 4 years old so whether or not the compatible device is easy to get I don't know.

Advice?

[mjwilson]

So current setup for our TV is just a Roku with my PC sat next to it so I can set it up with just an HDMI cable if I need to.

However situation is that we're ideally moving house soon, and the idea is the Desktop/Monitor would go upstairs and the TV/Roku would be downstairs.

This would be fine but there are a few non-app things we like to use on the regular on the PC (Dailymotion/BFI Player/Nextup/Vimeo) and also Roku doesn't have a Youtube app.

So ideally what I'd like to be able to do is stream the PC to the TV in another room, preferably without it only working through apps, so just the display and sound coming out of the TV.  If there's some way that I could also control the PC from another room that'd be great, but it's not essential.

I don't think our TV is smart but I'm pretty sure you can get a USB thing for it that would make it so, although it's at least 4 years old so whether or not the compatible device is easy to get I don't know.

Advice?

I know this doesn't really address your question but Roku does have a YouTube app (or at least mine does).

[Pink Gregory]

I know this doesn't really address your question but Roku does have a YouTube app (or at least mine does).

Maybe you have an older one, I was reading about it when I was getting one and there was some sort of legal battle with Google to keep it off the Roku platform after a certain point.  It certainly doesn't come up on the search on ours.  It supports the app still but you can't install it.

[Evil Knevil]

Standard advice is to try turning your desktop pc into a media server (whether part time or running 24/7).

Roku will have apps for any of the major media server programmes.

Plex is the most popular but you have to pay for certain useful features like sound levelling and hardware streaming.

I use Jellyfin which is completely free and actually pretty user friendly.

https://jellyfin.org/

Took me maybe an afternoon to set up. The majority of which is just creating the database of tv shows (cataloging etc). The media PC is in a cabinet near the router and the Roku runs on the projector in the back room.

Effectively the Roku and the PC share the processing effort to do the steaming. Bandwidth is unlikely to be a problem as it will all be running on your intranet.

Drop me a PM if you ever want help doing this. I'm an evangelist now having had it going for 2 years (since lockdown hahaha).

[Evil Knevil]

Oh and I think you can use screen mirroring for the other stuff if your Pc is reasonably up to date (can mirror from PC to Roku across the network) Even use your phone as a remote control to flip the PC into mirroring mode.

[Pink Gregory]

Oh and I think you can use screen mirroring for the other stuff if your Pc is reasonably up to date (can mirror from PC to Roku across the network) Even use your phone as a remote control to flip the PC into mirroring mode.

I think that'd be pretty much what I want, the only control option I would really want is play/pause and that's basically just a mouseclick on a browser window.  I'd probably have a reasonable time doing it off my phone to be honest but in the case of e.g.streaming a 1080p film I don't onow if it'd be adequate compared to a desktop

[touchingcloth]

Can you get a Plex client app for your model of Roku?

I setup a Plex server for my streaming a few months ago thanks to the advice given in this thread - https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=94749.0 - and it's worked great for me so far. The biggest hassle was the initial setup of renaming my existing media files, but there are tools to help with that (some of them are mentioned in that same thread) so it wasn't the biggest hassle of all time. I got through about 1TB of stuff in a couple of afternoons.

[Shaxberd]

I bought a new Roku pretty recently and it came with YouTube already on it, not sure what's going on there.

But anyway, a relatively easy option is a Chromecast - it's smoother with apps but possible to share and broadcast whatever's on your desktop as well. That also gives you the option to use a phone, I've been able to play stuff from Daily motion on a phone browser on a TV with a Chromecast dongle.

[Pink Gregory]

Apparently the Roku supports screen mirroring/casting from the desktop but I can't seem to get the resolution right, I'm sure I can figure something out

[mjwilson]

I can do "Connect to a wireless display" from Windows 10 and then just select the Roku. There seem to be a few pixels going missing around the edge of the screen but nothing that seems like a huge deal.

[touchingcloth]

Screensharing with video rather than streaming, casting directly always seems to be choppier and laggier for me. It works in a pinch, but I don't think I could use it regularly.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Standard advice is to try turning your desktop pc into a media server (whether part time or running 24/7).

Roku will have apps for any of the major media server programmes.

Plex is the most popular but you have to pay for certain useful features like sound levelling and hardware streaming.

I use Jellyfin which is completely free and actually pretty user friendly.

https://jellyfin.org/

Took me maybe an afternoon to set up. The majority of which is just creating the database of tv shows (cataloging etc). The media PC is in a cabinet near the router and the Roku runs on the projector in the back room.

Effectively the Roku and the PC share the processing effort to do the steaming. Bandwidth is unlikely to be a problem as it will all be running on your intranet.

Drop me a PM if you ever want help doing this. I'm an evangelist now having had it going for 2 years (since lockdown hahaha).

I've done this but also now have dockerised a vpn'd radarr/sonarr/torrent stack.

When I was down at my parents I got a power cut which knocked it all offline and the box it was on needed the drive unlocking to boot it back up. So I set up wireguard vpn on a raspberry pi I use as a kodi/plex client so I can remote unlock.

The upshot of this is I can now trigger tv/movie downloads from the pub.

I may have gone too far.

I also intend to switch from plex to jellyfin; I haven't done it yet for technical reasons (I have a new pc to host this on which will be able to hardware transcode and use less power, but haven't gotten around to setting up Linux to recognise the graphics chip and pass it through to a vm and docker).

PG sorry this is off topic. Looks like your options are get mirroring working well on roku, chrome cast (cheap and generally 'just works') or wireless hdmi.

[Pink Gregory]

Yeah I'm thinking Chromecast.  I couldn't get the screen mirroring to work all that well on the Roku (couldn't get the resolution right somehow) and what I did get to work was a bit artifact-y and choppy.  At least the Chromecast has a browser.