The Google Chromecast is a fantastic little piece of tech that you can do a surprising amount of stuff with given its relatively low price tag. While there are dedicated games made for Chromecast, you can actually play your regular Android games on it pretty easily too.
How to play games on your smart TV: LG To get playing games on your LG smart TV, you’ll need to download some titles from LG’s apps store and make sure you have a controller at the ready. Included with 4K TVs in Sharp's UH30 and UE30 series, Android TV™ allows you to wirelessly cast your current games library from your Android or iOS device to your smart TV, or download new titles straight from your TV using Google Play™.
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Doing this is actually incredibly simple by using a feature built into many Android phones: screen mirroring.
How to Use Screen Mirroring
Like I said, this is built into many Android phones, but not all Android phones. Pixel, Nexus, and other stock Android phones will feature screen mirroring as part of the core OS experience, but Samsung Galaxy devices don’t have this option built in. We’ll cover how to do it from both down below.
How to Cast Your Device Screen from Stock Android
If you’re using a device running stock Android, then mirroring your device’s screen is as simple as pulling down the Quick Settings panel and tapping an icon.
Go head and give the notification bar a tug to show the show the Quick Settings panel. You may have to give it a second tug to expose the entire thing.
Look for the “Cast” icon. If you don’t see it here, you may need to swipe over to a second screen. If there isn’t a second screen, then you’ll have to edit your Quick Settings panel to add it.
Once you find it, however, just give it a tap, then choose your cast device.
It should connect immediately, and you’re good to go.
To disconnect, just tap the Cast icon again and choose “Disconnect.”
How to Use Screen Mirroring on Non-Stock Devices
If you’re using a non-stock Android device, like a Samsung Galaxy or an LG handset, then you’ll have to go about this a different way.
The easiest thing to do here is use the Google Home app, which you should already have installed since it’s required to set up your Chromecast in the first place. Go ahead and launch the app.
How To Download Game On Smart Tv Network
From there, slide open the menu and tap the “Cast Screen / Audio” button. This will open the screen mirroring menu, and likely generate a “not optimized” warning message. Tap “OK.”
Tap the “Cast Screen / Audio” button, then choose your cast device.
To disconnect, open the Home app again (or tap the Casting notification) and choose “Disconnect.” Easy peasy.
What to Do Once You’re Connected
Now that you’re mirroring your device’s screen, just launch a game and start playing! Everything that happens on your device will also show up on the TV—that means home screens, any app you launch, and of course, games.
Okay, Cool. But How Well Does this Actually Work?
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For simple stuff like showing your home screens or viewing pictures, screen mirroring is fine. But what about game performance?
Surprisingly, it isn’t terrible. In my testing, mirroring in was very low latency—much less than I expected—but there are a few factors to consider here.
First off, your device. If your device is already struggling to run a game, throwing casting into the picture isn’t going to make anything better; in fact, I wouldn’t recommend that at all. But if your device purrs along nicely, give it a go! You may find everything to be great.
Secondly, consider your Wi-Fi connection. Since all this is happening over Wi-Fi, you’re going to want a good router, and thus, a strong local connection. If you’re using an old 802.11b router, for example, it probably won’t provide the best experience. Anything modern should work pretty well, though.
Overall, I admit that I’m slightly shocked at how well this worked. Every game I tried was definitely playable, which I didn’t really expect. I was ready for latency and all sorts of glitchy garbage, but that simply wasn’t the case. If you were to add a game controller to the mix, I imagine something like Modern Combat 5 or Unkilled could be really cool using screen mirroring.
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No need to wait for Valve’s Steam Machines — connect your Windows gaming PC to your TV and use powerful PC graphics in the living room today. It’s easy — you don’t need any unusual hardware or special software.
This is ideal if you’re already a PC gamer who wants to play your games on a larger screen. It’s also convenient if you want to play multiplayer PC games with controllers in your living rom.
HDMI Cables and Controllers
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You’ll need an HDMI cable to connect your PC to your television. This requires a TV with HDMI-in, a PC with HDMI-out, and an HDMI cable. Modern TVs and PCs have had HDMI built in for years, so you should already be good to go. If you don’t have a spare HDMI cable lying around, you may have to buy one or repurpose one of your existing HDMI cables. Just don’t buy the expensive HDMI cables — even a cheap HDMI cable will work just as well as a more expensive one.
Plug one end of the HDMI cable into the HDMI-out port on your PC and one end into the HDMI-In port on your TV. Switch your TV’s input to the appropriate HDMI port and you’ll see your PC’s desktop appear on your TV. Your TV becomes just another external monitor.
If you have your TV and PC far away from each other in different rooms, this won’t work. If you have a reasonably powerful laptop, you can just plug that into your TV — or you can unplug your desktop PC and hook it up next to your TV.
Now you’ll just need an input device. You probably don’t want to sit directly in front of your TV with a wired keyboard and mouse! A wireless keyboard and wireless mouse can be convenient and may be ideal for some games. However, you’ll probably want a game controller like console players use. Better yet, get multiple game controllers so you can play local-multiplayer PC games with other people.
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The Xbox 360 controller is the ideal controller for PC gaming. Windows supports these controllers natively, and many PC games are designed specifically for these controllers. Note that Xbox One controllers aren’t yet supported on Windows because Microsoft hasn’t released drivers for them.
Yes, you could use a third-party controller or go through the process of pairing a PlayStation controller with your PC using unofficial tools, but it’s better to get an Xbox 360 controller. Just plug one or more Xbox controllers into your PC’s USB ports and they’ll work without any setup required. While many PC games to support controllers, bear in mind that some games require a keyboard and mouse.
A TV-Optimized Interface
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Use Steam’s Big Picture interface to more easily browse and launch games. This interface was designed for using on a television with controllers and even has an integrated web browser you can use with your controller. It will be used on the Valve’s Steam Machine consoles as the default TV interface. You can use a mouse with it too, of course. There’s also nothing stopping you from just using your Windows desktop with a mouse and keyboard — aside from how inconvenient it will be.
To launch Big Picture Mode, open Steam and click the Big Picture button at the top-right corner of your screen. You can also press the glowing Xbox logo button in the middle of an Xbox 360 Controller to launch the Big Picture interface if Steam is open.
Another Option: In-Home Streaming
If you want to leave your PC in one room of your home and play PC games on a TV in a different room, you can consider using local streaming to stream games over your home network from your gaming PC to your television. Bear in mind that the game won’t be as smooth and responsive as it would if you were sitting in front of your PC. You’ll also need a modern router with fast wireless network speeds to keep up with the game streaming.
Steam’s built-in In-Home Streaming feature is now available to everyone. You could plug a laptop with less-powerful graphics hardware into your TV and use it to stream games from your powerful desktop gaming rig. You could also use an older desktop PC you have lying around.
How To Use Smart Tv
To stream a game, log into Steam on your gaming PC and log into Steam with the same account on another computer on your home network. You’ll be able to view the library of installed games on your other PC and start streaming them.
NVIDIA also has their own GameStream solution that allows you to stream games from a PC with powerful NVIDIA graphics hardware. However, you’ll need an NVIDIA Shield handheld gaming console to do this. At the moment, NVIDIA’s game streaming solution can only stream to the NVIDIA Shield. However, the NVIDIA Shield device can be connected to your TV so you can play that streaming game on your TV.
Valve’s Steam Machines are supposed to bring PC gaming to the living room, and they’ll do it using HDMI cables, a custom Steam controller, the Big Picture interface, and in-home streaming for compatibility with Windows games. You can do all of this yourself today — you’ll just need an Xbox 360 controller instead of the not-yet-released Steam controller.
Image Credit: Marco Arment on Flickr, William Hook on Flickr, Lewis Dowling on Flickr
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