Technical terms can be confusing. Here’s a breakdown of wireless screen mirroring, screencasting, and desktop sharing.
Our devices can increasingly interact with each other in ways that are bringing us closer and eliminating cables for good. Various types of wireless interactions work differently depending on what content you want to show and how. Let’s go through some examples.
Screen mirroring is a way to share your screen. As the name suggests, screen mirroring allows you to project, or “mirror”, what is on your smartphone, tablet, or computer and show it on your TV screen, projector, or external monitor without needing to use a cable. The TV or projector will show a replica of what’s displayed on your computer or mobile device, including any movement.
Unlike when we look into a glass mirror, screen mirroring won’t horizontally flip what you see. So when you hear mirroring, think copying. This is great for viewing local content such as pictures, videos, documents, and professional or educational presentations. During a presentation, you can even choose to only present a specific app or window while still getting to look at your presentation notes privately. This is possible with BiJie’s Single Window Sharing feature, which mirrors a specific window rather than your full screen.
With Miracast now available, BiJie Meeting Box also lets you extend your desktop from Windows computers. This means that, in addition to “mirroring” something you have on your screen, Miracast can also let you use a large display as a second screen. Like Single Window Sharing, extended desktop is a nifty way to view your presenter notes privately while sharing presentation content to your audience.
The major difference between screen mirroring and screencasting is how content is shared to a display. In the case of screencasting, your TV wirelessly receives online content via a digital media player to a TV via a wireless connection.
Screencasting uses an app to send movies, video clips, and music from your phone, tablet or computer to your TV screen. For example, you can use the YouTube or Netflix app on your phone to cast video over the internet from the YouTube or Netflix servers to your TV display.
With casting, you can use your phone or tablet while casting a movie without any interruption. When casting, you’re not streaming video from your mobile device to the TV display, but rather using your mobile to initially set up the cast, and then letting the YouTube or Netflix server do the rest of the work. The term casting is synonymous with products like Chromecast which it has largely stemmed from. You could use your phone to start a movie on your friend’s Chromecast-equipped TV at their house, and then leave. The movie would continue to play.
BiJie supports both Google Cast and Miracast in terms of their screen mirroring and extended desktop functionalities.
Confusion might arise due to the multiple solutions that use “sharing” in different contexts. While screen mirroring is a form of sharing, “desktop sharing” can also involve sharing between computer screens. An example of this is sharing slides through a video call, allowing people working remotely to see their colleague’s or classmate’s presentation.
Solutions like BiJie work differently. They let you share your device screen locally (including your desktop screen), within the context of a meeting or classroom. BiJie mirrors the screen from your personal device and shares it to a larger display (e.g. TV, projector, or smartboard). In other words, BiJe Meeting Box is a solution for “live” presentations that call for individuals to direct their attention to a person who is physically present and using one (or two) displays to show visual aids that are complementary to the message of the speaker.
BiJie is a high-tech R&D enterprise focusing on the wireless display and interactive. It is committed to provide leading wireless display and interactive product and solution of smart meeting room and classroom.
BiJie can supply Miracast SDK or WiDi SDK which supports UIBC and Intel Cursor. We also can supply SDKs of other Wireless Display protocols such as Airplay, DLNA, Google Cast.
At present, BiJie Networks has established cooperation with hundreds of well-known companies and institutions in the world, including Haier(SEHK: 1169) , JD.com(NASDAQ: JD) , 58.com(NYSE：WUBA), PetroChina(NYSE: PTR), MCC, Accenture(NYSE: ACN), Osram(FWB: OSR) and many other industry-level head enterprises.