Miracast is a technology that we at Ausdroid have been fans of for awhile, but it has been let down by limited availability of Miracast receivers and compatible display devices. Most modern Android devices can share their screens or cast video to a Miracast receiver. LG and NetGear both have Miracast receivers on market, but they aren’t always easy to come by.
It’s not surprising, then, that Sony has introduced its own Miracast compatible adapter to get your smartphone content onto the big screen. Sony’s Miracast Wireless Display IM10 will help to bridge that gap.
You might ask, if you’re new to Miracast, how does this differ from a Chromecast dongle? Miracast is as it sounds — it mirrors your content to a TV, and in some instances, allows you to cast video to the TV while doing other tasks (though this is highly dependent on smartphone support; not all of them can do this). Chromecast, on the other hand, is the opposite — designed to throw YouTube and other content to the big screen, but you can’t (as yet) mirror your smartphone display to a TV.
With that aside, Sony’s IM10 adapter simply attaches to your television via a HDMI cable and needs to be powered by micro USB (included in the box). You can then use a Miracast enabled smartphone such as the Xperia Z1, Xperia Z Ultra or Xperia Z (or any other Miracast device from another manufacturer — the HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S4 and Nexus 4, to name but three) to share media wirelessly to a larger screen. This includes 1080p video using Wi-Fi direct.
As an added bonus, Sony’s IM10 is NFC enabled, meaning you need only tap your Sony Xperia handset to the device to pair the two together. It is unknown whether this feature will work on other handsets, but if we get a hands-on with the IM10, we’ll test this out.
Are you interested in a Sony Miracast device like this?
How much?
Very interested. But I need a price.