I’ve had a Chromecast for almost a decade, and it had mostly been great. They cost £30 at the time, and let you cast from most media apps, even if they didn’t really have their own UI. You could take it to a friends house / hotel, power it off of the USB port on the back of most TVs and you’d be off to the races.
Given that they are now discontinued and my old one doesn’t support 4K and casting from some newer apps (maybe a lack of AV1 / h265 support?), I’m looking for a replacement.
I’m looking for a privacy-respecting device in a vaguely stick-like format that will support casting from Android. It having support for apps is a nice to have for me.
Before you say “well if you use YouTube / Plex it’s not private because they collect data about what you watch”, sure, that may be true, but I’d rather not have the stick itself also do ACR on everything I cast as well.
My iPhone has a screen mirroring function. If the TV does Bluetooth, you can display your entire screen and play whatever you want.
I think Android must have a similar feature, I’ve seen connection popups for Samsung devices that I denied from my TV.
If you have a non Bluetooth TV, then it won’t work.
I prefer to not rely on screen mirroring as it means I can’t check my phone without interrupting what I’m watching. Especially a problem when watching with someone else.
You could buy a cheap(ish) device dedicated for this purpose that can handle the apps you want. Think of it as a more expensive chromecast.
A separate device can also mean more privacy depending on how you configure it.
What software / OS would I run on this device to get a seamless fullscreen experience (like consoles / sticks / SteamOS)?
No clue. I don’t use any consoles or steam.