Casting a Presentation to Chromecast or Amazon Fire TV

The last few years has seen the emergence of small devices that plug into the HDMI port of a TV, connect to your wifi, and allow you to stream from online services such as Netflix and Amazon.

What you also can do is “cast” content from a mobile device to the stick, content that includes movies, photos and music.

What isn’t currently possible is to cast documents to the stick and onto the screen which is a shame as it would be good to do so in situations where you might not have your laptop but do have the stick and a HDMI enabled screen. However, with a bit of foresight it is actually possible and I will show you how.

The following method is, I admit, a bit convoluted but it does work and involves converting a PowerPoint presentation to either a series of images or a video.

As a video

Choose Export from the File menu (where this appears depends slightly on the version):

Screenshot_2015-05-09_14_40_35

Select Create a Video:

Screenshot_2015-05-09_14_40_49

Choose the options – the defaults are probably fine.

Screenshot_2015-05-09_14_40_53

Now copy the exported file to your device (I did this via Dropbox).

For the actual casting I used Allcast which is available for both Android and iOS. Here is the app with the presentation running as a movie:

2015-05-09 14.40.36

And on the TV:

2015-05-09 14.41.19

If you have an Amazon Fire TV you will find that you can stop and start the video as needed.

As a series of images

Choose Save As from the File menu:

Screenshot_2015-05-09_14_42_38

Choose where you want the exported files to go and choose “PNG Portable Network Graphics” from the “Save As Type” drop down list.

Screenshot_2015-05-09_14_42_57

When asked choose to export all slides rather than just the current slide:

Screenshot_2015-05-09_14_43_02

Confirm the export:

Screenshot_2015-05-09_14_43_13

As before transfer the older of images to your device and cast through AllCast:

2015-05-09 14.45.07

Neither of these methods is perfect but they do serve a purpose until casting is added to native applications.