All of us are in situations where we need to show certain content to many people and the easiest way to do that is through our phones. Whether it’s a family meeting, a work presentation or just for fun, everyone gathers around our small screens to watch the latest photos from Albuquerque or Welbeck’s last-minute win against Leicester City.
If you have a Chromecast, you can mirror your phone screen to make it easier for everyone. But what if you don’t have one? Then get one. Seriously. But the Play Store, as always, has many apps to address your needs. One of these applications is Screen Stream Mirroring, which provides mirroring not only for web browsers, media players, and Chromecast, but also for Twitch, YouTube, and UStream.
Setup
I am happy to say that no initial setup is required. Android specifies that the app will start capturing everything displayed on my screen. You just need to press start now and the application is ready to work. Each method of mirroring the scene has its own little forced setting, but nothing I’ve tested has been too complicated.
application
Screen Stream Mirroring offers several ways to mirror your device’s screen, but the easiest is through a browser, using Wi-Fi or your data connection. You only need to type an address and the screen will be streamed to your browser instantly. I was pleasantly surprised at how effortless the experience was. While mirroring, press the camera button on the app’s persistent notification and it will display a small camera overlay in the lower right corner. For the most part, it works without any problems, with the stream only lagging behind the actual screen output by 2-3 seconds.
I also tested the app using VLC media player for Windows. The same process applies: you type an address into the “Open Network Stream” option, and mirroring begins seamlessly. Although there were minimal artifacts that didn’t detract from an otherwise pleasant experience, the experience was almost exactly the same as mirrored through a browser.
You can also stream your screen to services like Twitch, YouTube and Ustream. Also, the app gives you the option to enter your own information. This way, you can stream your phone screen to any server. I personally tested streaming to Twitch. To start exposing your Clash of Clans village to the gaming world, you’ll need to select a server URL and get your key from Twitch. The app makes it easy by redirecting you to a web page where you can easily get this key.
After changing my encoding bitrate to adjust my internet’s glacial speed, I actually got it working. I’m sure this mode will work well for those of you with decent internet speeds, but the fact that I can actually stream my screen to Twitch speaks volumes about the reliability of this mode.