Best Miracast Alternative for Wireless Screen Mirroring?

If you have a smart TV and a Windows or Android device, you can either cast directly from your device or download a number of inexpensive or free apps onto your device. There are a number of solutions on sites like Amazon, and while they can all do screen mirroring it can be a challenge to implement effectively for use in a meeting room. For example, apps may have restrictions on third-party software on your device, such as VMWare, that would need to be uninstalled for the app to work. This is often why many products have poor Amazon ratings. Also, many of these apps may lack security featues such as encryption or may not work on all types of devices. Many of these also require the display ( projector / tv / touch screen ) to be able to receive a Miracast signal. You may also want to check the reviews associated with the app or product to see how easy ( or not ) others found it to set up and use.

Since many companies use displays without integrated smart TV software in meeting rooms, one inexpensive alternative is the use of Miracast with a Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter. While these are inexpensive Miracast alternative solutions, they may not be what you need for collaborative meeting rooms where the BYOD approach is common. Another popular solution is the BenQ QCast Video Streaming Dongle , which is designed to run on many popular projectors and can wirelessly stream your videos, movies, documents, websites, and live video sessions to any display with 1080p image quality and 30FPS video. While the QCast supports all major types of computers and mobile devices via an app, there is no compatibility with Mac OS X or iOS devices through the Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter, and only limited support for some Android devices. One additional consideration is that it is difficult to ensure that wireless content is not being seen or recorded by an unauthorized employee or hacker, since these wireless transmissions may be received outside the conference room or huddle space.

While Miracast can be a great technology to wirelessly mirror your computer screen to a meeting room display, wireless HDMI presentation systems that are actually designed for meetings are the most popular ones for use with BYOD based on data from Futuresource. These systems are more expensive than free apps or inexpensive dongles, but deliver a number of unique benefits that are needed in a typical meeting room or huddle space. These include :

- Instant switching between multiple presenters
- Support for major desktop, notebook, and tablet operating systems
- Support for media players, cameras, and other non-PC devices that output HDMI
- Content and network security protection
- Split-screen display for multiple presenters 

The most popular systems include the Barco ClickShare and BenQ InstaShow. 

The BenQ InstaShow is an example of a wireless HDMI system designed for meeting room collaboration. You plug in a “button”, which is a wireless HDMI transmitter, to your notebook or mobile device, and with one tap start presenting to the screen. The system uses an intuitive design and doesn’t require any apps or special software to be loaded onto a presenter’s device . It comes with two buttons and a tabletop holder to keep everything neat. BenQ InstaShow has AES 128-bit encryption and WPA authentication, which keep your network and presentations secure from wireless snooping and recording, and level up your meeting experience and data security. 

Here is a fair comparison of how different Miracast alternatives break down by feature and price. While there are over 40 different wireless presentation systems available today, these are solid meeting room screen mirroring solutions from the popular worldwide brands according to Futuresource.