Mirroring solutions for Mac, iOS, Android, and Windows devices?

[Techslacker]

I work technical support in a community college and we're exploring mirroring solutions for students and faculty to mirror their devices for presenting their work to others. I'm curious to find what others have found that works well and is cost effective.

 

We have some on campus that have started experimenting with Apple TV's and Chromecasts. The Chromecasts have been a near complete failure while the Apple TV's have done well overall. The problem there, though, is that Windows and Android do not have native airplay abilities thus adding to the cost should we pursue to go campus wide with that solution. We're about to look at some solutions like AirServer which would let us install software on a PC or Mac to do the mirroring that would allow Mac, iOS, Android, and Windows to mirror to it.

 

I know there are some other solutions out there and would like to get some feedback from others who may have already went down this road. What did you find? How well does it work? Cost? etc?

[Sagima]

We use airparrot to mirror to apple tvs connected to projectors/tvs (from windows) and airserver to mirror to PCs connected to projectors (from windows and apple devices).

 

It was pretty cheap and it works reasonably well - the windows 8 realtek sound driver seems to have some issues streaming sound but the generic windows one doesn't so uninstalling the driver fixes it. We don't mirror across different vlans.

 

It's simple enough for almost all the teachers to use although some regard projecting wirelessly as somehow inferior to using a cable which, so far, it doesn't appear to be

Edited March 30, 2016 by Sagima

[Clevertouch_Rob]

Try DisplayNote https://www.displaynote.com/displaynote/

[VeryPC_Anthony_L]

I have tested both Airparrot and Airserver. Both are really good and work well but personally found Air parrot to be a nicer solution. My question would be is do you want 2 way collaboration as if so you would ideally need something like Screenbeam 950 type device.

 

Anthony

[Brimstone]

Try DisplayNote https://www.displaynote.com/displaynote/

 

Whilst good DisplayNote been around for years and for me is always over complicated to allow you to just mirror...AirServer/AirParrot do the job

[Techslacker]

I failed to mention that we have looked at AirParrot. The problem there is cost. Yes, it's inexpensive for personal user or for a few but we have well over 5000 students. We're not comfortable in having suitable adoption of the technology by forcing a cost on the students and if the campus takes on the cost, simple math shows $25,000+ not to mention then that's 5000 licenses codes that need to be managed by someone here. I spoke with them and their licensing for students would come down to 5000+ codes we manage and distribute or the students get coupon codes and pay $5 for themselves.

 

The product also doesn't address Android users.

 

The product as tested on Windows computers worked well although I noticed performance was a little less than the builtin airplay implementation Apple provides an iPhone 6 and iPad Air. Still usable but I thought it might be closer.

 

With our needs I think our most cost and use effective solution is to go with a product that can serve the needs of multiple devices. While AirParrot technically is good, it doesn't seem like a good fit for us.