Does chromecast support MPEG-DASH now?

3
votes

I have 3 questions. I've been trying to find answers before posting it, but failed. Please leave a short comment if you know even a little though.

  • Question #1

    Does Chromecast support MPEG-DASH now? I've tested a sample program (cast-chrome, provided by google) to play MPEG-DASH stream by replacing the url to MEPG-DASH MPD URL. But the device cannot play the stream. I want to know that MPEG-DASH is now available in Developer Preview SDK. Or do I have to wait until the final sdk is available?

  • Question #2

    Does Chromecast support MPEG2-TS container format for MPEG-DASH?

  • Question #3

    Is WebM container format available for MPEG-DASH?

2
google-castchromecast

2 Answers

6
votes

1) Short answer is that yes, MPEG-DASH is supported.

The long answer is that MSE is supported, which means you can write a player to play fragmented HTTP content. This allows for DASH support, but DASH is not supported by default. You cannot pass an MPD to the Chromecast and have it play. Instead you must create a custom application which parses the MPD, loads the fragments, and passes the bytes into the MSE sourcebuffer.

2) I do not believe so. https://developers.google.com/cast/supported_media_types

3) As the other answerer said, yes. DASH should be fairly agnostic when it comes to the fragments container format.

I've been working on a Dash player for some time, and I have successfully created a Chromecast application that uses the Dash player. You can find the open source player here https://github.com/Dash-Industry-Forum/dash.js. The Chromecast applications are in the chromecast directory (https://github.com/Dash-Industry-Forum/dash.js/tree/master/chromecast). There is a reciever, a http sender and a native android sender. The implementation is far from complete, but it's a working first attempt.

1
votes

1. Yes - You must create your own player using the Media Source Extensions

3. Yes.

We will have more when the API's leave preview.