Ubuntu as Miracast Sender/receiver
I couldn't find anything about Ubuntu acting as a Miracast receiver or sender.
- Can it work at all?
- Are there hardware prerequisites?
- Is WiFi a requirement or can it work over LAN or another kind of network connection?
- WiFi direct seems to be a necessary requirement, is it a sufficient one? (i.e. if a system supports WiFi direct does that mean it supports Miracast?)
- Are there differences in support between receiving/sending?
- How is the latency? (compared to the competition, i.e. VNC, commercial Miracast devices, etc.)
- How do I actually use it, if it's difficult?
Specifically, I plan to use it together with an Android phone (4.x Jelly Bean).
OpenWFD is dead and now superceded by MiracleCast:
MiracleCast is an open-source implementation of the Miracast technology (also: Wifi-Display (WFD)). It is based on the OpenWFD research project and will supercede it. We focus on proper and tight integration into existing Linux-Desktop systems, compared to OpenWFD which was meant as playground for fast-protoyping.
Despite its name and origin, the project itself is not limited to Miracast. We can support any kind of display-streaming with just a minimal amount of additional work. However, Miracast will remain the main development target due to its level of awareness.
It's still early in its development cycle. Currently it seems like it can do the linking, but won't do the actual video streaming.
The OpenWFD demo at FOSDEM 2014 also did the streaming bit, but as I understand MiracleCast is a do it right project, whereas the code he showed at FOSDEM "will probably only work on this machine".
Miracast is based on WiFi Direct, which as far as I can tell requires a wireless card with hardware support for the standard.
Sender
I think Intel Wireless Display is the way to send a laptop screen to a Miracast receiver.
However, as far as I can tell Ubuntu currently has no support for Wireless Display cards.
Receiver
For receiving content from a Miracast transmitter (like your phone), you can buy Miracast receiver dongles that will output to any HDMI input: Rocketfish™ - Miracast Video Receiver
There is also Chromecast, but it only receives content sent from a Chrome browser, rather than from an entire display.
I don't know if either device has Ubuntu drivers. If anyone can confirm, or suggest another device with Ubuntu drivers, that would be great.