That screen you're looking at there? It's not my Mac. It's my Apple TV. TUAW reader James Low wondered if you could stream your OS X screen using the screen:// feature of VLC along the lines of the instructions found on this blog post. I decided to test it out using the same method I described in my earlier DVD-to-Apple TV post.
Instead of streaming from my DVD (namely via dvdread:///dev/rdisk5@1:3-), I substituted screen://, as follows.
/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -vv screen:// --intf=rc '--sout=#transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=2048,acodec=mp4a,ab=192}:standard{mux=ts,dst=-,access=file}' | mediastreamsegmenter -f /Library/WebServer/Documents/stream -D
It worked. All other instructions remain the same as from the DVD post.
So what are the downsides? First, the image was a bit blurry due to the H.264 transcoding and the limited bit rate, but it wasn't too bad. It remained reasonably readable at all times. Second, there was a distinct lag between what was going on at the Mac and what was being shown on the Apple TV. Pausing the stream, like I did to take this screen shot, slightly increased that lag.
Instead of streaming from my DVD (namely via dvdread:///dev/rdisk5@1:3-), I substituted screen://, as follows.
/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -vv screen:// --intf=rc '--sout=#transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=2048,acodec=mp4a,ab=192}:standard{mux=ts,dst=-,access=file}' | mediastreamsegmenter -f /Library/WebServer/Documents/stream -D
It worked. All other instructions remain the same as from the DVD post.
So what are the downsides? First, the image was a bit blurry due to the H.264 transcoding and the limited bit rate, but it wasn't too bad. It remained reasonably readable at all times. Second, there was a distinct lag between what was going on at the Mac and what was being shown on the Apple TV. Pausing the stream, like I did to take this screen shot, slightly increased that lag.
On the bright side? Screencasting. From your Mac. To your Apple TV.
I think that's pretty cool.
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