I used to use an apple tv to mirror iphone or ipad or macbook to the tv but always seemed to have an issue when I actually wanted to use it and it was so haphazard.
Does anyone use any other reliable methods to mirror to the tv?
Firestick?
I’ve one and it seems to work OK. I’ve an Apple TV too (in fact we’ve a few generations of them) . Possibly the worst Apple device I’ve ever bought and very expensive for what it does. Which isn’t (as you point out) mirror our Macbooks or iPads simply.
Yes, certainly no fan of the apple tv now - had 3 and all seemed to slowly pack up. I have a couple of firesticks and they were abismal, and quite literally unusable, then one day, for absolutely no reason that I can understand, started to work (touching lots of wood as I say this as have been glued to the rugby with them over the last weeks). So now the firesticks are back in the good books, but you can’t mirror with them, as far as I know.
I see alot of Chinese ‘stuff’ out there on amazon for mirroring, but trying to avoid bringing more ‘stuff’ into my life if it doesn’t work and add value, and ends up parked up somewhere covered in dust or clogged up a drawer!
2 Likes
Firesticks do Mirror.
Press and hold Home until a menu pops up - mirroring is there
2 Likes
Up until recently I used to cast with a chromecast thingy. I have yet to reset the TV after we swapped to fibre and bought new ipad (shows you how often I use it as have had fibre for ages) but it used to work fine from ipad.
I really must have a go as we are watching the Vuelta on the ipad which is not ideal!
Great to here 
I’ll give it a whirl later no more stuff - a blessing - thankyou 
If all else fails, you could buy an HDMI adapter for the iPad.
I use a chromecast as well. Got it half price from Darty 4 years ago. Cheap as chips and just works every time. I assume it’ll work with an iThing as well as it does my Android stuff and the PC.
Tried the firestick last night, but saw I had to download an app on the tv, then it was asking me to download an app on the iphone/ipad, so not really what I was looking for. Simply want to activate the screen mirroring on iphone/ipad and to just mirror 
@hairbear you mention the chromecast thingy will also work with apple gear. Is it very simple to use i.e no downloading another app, loading videos through the app etc etc???
I link laptop to TV with HDMI cable.
2 Likes
Yes I was also doing that but did find it a little cumbersome with the cable lying around, and tripped over it a couple of times, hence wanting to find a wireless solution.
This is fascinating. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what any of you are talking about. 
1 Like
Agree. Maybe someone can explain in no jargon and non tech speak?
1 Like
It’s a bit difficult to talk about tech subjects without tech language.
What a good idea - does this exist? I have an adaptor to plug in USB key to ipad, and we have an HDMI cable with a USB connector. So maybe connecting those together woukd work
Thanks a diversion for this afternoon!
For me, I plugged it in to HDMI plus USB power, ran the app on my tablet which found the device, connected it to wifi and it just worked. May not be so simple in iThings, so you may need to look online for that. I think you need the app to set it up so there would need to be an iThings app. Mine was just the dark grey round one that just casts, does nothing else. I see they are now €60 online, which is more than it was 4 years ago. I got mine for €20 half price. You can get loads of Miracast units that look very similar on Amazon much cheaper. They may be worth a look if you do Amazon.
Edit: The app is available for iThings. If you want to cast the screen, you can do this on Android devices without any additional software, but I don’t think you can on an iThing without extra software.
USB to HDMI converter - yes you can buy them. For PC or MAC
I have tried many of the gadgets on the market for getting an iPad to display on a TV or projector - I used my iPad to show my photos at business networking meetings, primarily.
None of them worked 100% reliably with a projector, though annoyingly they all worked beautifully with my Samsung TV at home!
The wireless devices all rely on both the iPad and the TV or wireless receiver being on the same wifi network - and if that is slow or not reliable then the mirroring won’t be either. I also found that the iPad would sometimes drop the connection if it found a wifi signal it liked better!
Similarly, Lightning to HDMI adaptor cables were just as problematic - some required power to work, which meant having another trailing cable connected to a powerbank or to the mains; those that didn’t need power were flaky in the extreme.
So I gave up on all of them and now I use an M2 MacBook Air with a USB-C to HDMi cable, which works 100% of the time. I think there’s something about iPads that doesn’t play well with the HDMI standard.
Hopefully you will have better luck than I did!
Thanks @ChrisMann that’s, in a strange way refreshing to hear, knowing it’s not just me 
Very oddly, I cranked up the apple tv last night and the mirroring just worked - very strange, but then again, I think that often happens with technology. One day it works fine, the next day it doesn’t so before launching forth with something else now I’ll see how long the apple tv winning streak lasts 
I would also suggest Firestick especially if you want to watch UK content. The reason is that you can now load a VPN app directly on to Firestick.
You can buy Firesticks from a French Amazon account and they will work BUT you will not see the iplayer/itvx.chanel 5 type programs in the app store. They are only seen in the app store on UK based Firesticks. The workaround is to sideload the app which is a bit of a faff if you are a non-techy like me.
The better solution is to change the location on your digital content Amazon account to UK. I did this to read UK Kindle books. I believe Amazon want to know in what country you have purchased your digital content so they know where to pay taxes on the income generated (if that is not an oxymoron!)