Do you have an LG Smart TV and you wish to cast the media files from your Andriod, Mac or Windows device to your LG Smart TV using VLC Media Player?
You can do that easily by Mirroring, Screen Sharing, Streaming or Screen Casting from the Device where you have the VLC Media Player installed to your LG Smart TV.
However, in this article, we will only be focusing on how to Screen Cast and Stream from your devices to your LG Smart Tv
VLC Media Player is a quite efficient tool when it comes to supporting a wide range of video files.
That is why I will be focusing on different alternative ways you can use to cast media content to your LG Smart TV, One of which is using a Chromecast dongle, that you can connect with your LG Smart TV
And, in this article, we will be focusing on that.
How to Cast VLC Media Player on LG Smart TV
You can cast your VLC media player to a Chromecast enabled device, however, LG Smart TV doesn’t support Chromecast as an inbuilt feature.
But the surprising thing is, you can actually setup Chromecast dongle on your LG Smart TV, since the influx of Web OS (which is a smart TV operating system owned by LG, which gives the TV have more advanced features)
That alone makes it easier to cast your devices using Chromecast with your LG Smart TV.
To cast your LG Smart TV with your Chromecast Dongle, closely follow these steps
Using the Chromecast Dongle
To make use of the Chromecast Dongle, follow these instructions closely:
- Get the Dongle and Insert it into the HDMI port of your TV/
- Now, Get your android Device and Search for “Google Home”
- Simply download it.
- Once it has been installed, make sure your Chromecast dongle and device are connected to the same WIFI network.
- After doing this, the app will automatically connect to your Chromecast.
- Now, simply open up your browser and go to “chromecast.com/setup”.
- Once it has been setup using your device name.
- Now, ensure that you are connected to the same Local wife as your Chromecast
- Now, open VLC media Player app (make sure you have the latest version installed)
- Open the app and locate the cast icon, located to the at the top middle corner just beside “video” click on it.
- A pop up will appear showing you the list of Cast-compatible devices you currently have on your network.
- Choose the Chromecast
- Now, choose a video from your list and select it.
After a few seconds the video will begin to load.
Immediately the loading stops. It will begin to play on your television.
Your phone immediately acts as a remote control, meaning that, you will be able to play, pause and stop the video at any time you like using your phone.
Now, in a scenario where you want to cast an individual video using the VLC media player app.
Cast a single Video using the VLC Media Player
Instead of selecting from the menu, simply do these:
- Select the video you wish to watch.
- Once it starts playing
- Locate the upper right corner of the display where you will see the cast icon
- Select this icon and choose your Chromecast (or Google cast device)
After doing all this correctly your video will start playing on your LG Smart TV, if you are making use of a PC, meaning the video is on your PC Device and you want to cast the video to your LG Smart TV, a preferable way to achieve this is to simply stream it from the VLC software to your LG Smart TV.
How to Stream videos from VLC Media Player on Windows PC to Your LG Smart TV
To stream your video content from VLC media player to your LG TV here’s how to go about it
- Now, launch VLC media player on your Windows PC.
- Then choose the “Stream option” which can be located in the Media menu.
- The next step is to, select “media”
- A popup window will be displayed in front of you, so as to enable you to stream media from all possible options.
- After doing this, add files from the “file tab” which you want to stream.
- Now, locate and select the “Add button” and add select “add files here”.
- Now, locate the “Capture Device Tab” and click on it
- Then, select “Desktop” which can be found in front of “Capture Mode option”.
- After that, locate the “Stream button” and click it.
- The window will be displayed.
- The first list is the media file you want to stream, click on “Next” to continue.
- Then, locate the next Windows Destination option and select the Destination where you want to stream your Media.
- Now, Select HTTP from here and then click on the Add button
- After doing this click on the Next button now.
- Now, it will take you to where you can customize the HTTP setting.
- Leave it at the default setting and select next.
- A new window will appear, simply click on the “Stream button”.
- Your firewall will request for permission to allow firewall access
- Simply, click on the “Allow Access button”.
- Now, locate the main menu and click it, and then choose “Open Network Stream” to connect to a stream.
- Since you are using an HTTP. All you have to do is to find out your IP address and enter an address like this: http://IP.Address:8080.
- In a scenario where there is a custom path specified by you for the HTTP stream, you have to specify the custom path here.
- Simply enter the address like “http://IP.Address:8080/path” in the address box.
- Now, locate and select the Play button now.
After doing all these your video should start playing on your other devices.
However, if you are using a mac system, here’s is how you can stream Video to a windows device
How to Use VLC Media Player to Stream Video to Windows device on Mac
VLC media player is a cross platform software, so since its has an available mac version, You can also make use of VLC media player to stream videos from Mac to your Windows Device.
I will be using a Mac PC as the source and a windows PC as the Destination.
You can stream from VLC to TV on Mac by closely following these instructions.
- Firstly, you need to search for your Mac’s local address or name.
- You can simply do that by going to “Preference” and then locate and click “sharing”
- Now, copy the local address name and paste it on your Notepad for later use.
- After doing this, launch VLC media player on your mac device and go to the file menu and select “Streaming/Export wizard”
- The, check the Stream to Network option and select Next.
- After selecting an input file from your computer. Pick “select a stream”
- Now, browse out the file from your local storage and picking the file, click the next button
- Since you’ve chosen HTTP in the current window, you will be able to play video on more computers, so there is no need to enter the destination.
- Now, after doing that on the transcode page, press the next button
- In this new window called the Encapsulating format window, choose how you want your video stream to be encapsulated – MPEG TS is a good format to select
- On the next window, you don’t need to change anything here, click on the ”next button” and select “finish”
- On your windows computer, Launch VLC Media Player and click on media
- Now click on “open network stream”
- The address which you saved on the Notepad app of your Mac pc, simply get it and type it on the input bar where you can see “Please enter a network URL”
After doing this, the video on your mac will start playing on the windows device.
Conclusion
LG Smart TV doesn’t come with an inbuilt Chromecast, however, you can make use of the Chromecast dongle to connect Chromecast devices to your LG Smart TV.
Doing this makes it easy for you to cast videos from your VLC media player to your LG Smart TV.
Casting Videos to your LG Smart TV is easy to setup using the VLC Media Player app, but to effectively mirror or cast the screen of smaller devices on your LG Smart TV, its much advisable to either mirror the Device with your LG Smart TV or screen share it using your HDMI cables. However, streaming is another viable option if you want to make use of a real time network