pillarbox-cast

Provides a PillarboxPlayer implementation based on Media 3 CastPlayer that controls a Cast receiver app.

Integration

To use this module, add the following dependency to your module's build.gradle/build.gradle.kts file:

implementation("ch.srgssr.pillarbox:pillarbox-cast:<pillarbox_version>")

The main goal of this module is to be able to build a user interface that can be used with a PillarboxExoPlayer or PillarboxCastPlayer. Both implementations are based on the PillarboxPlayer interface.

Getting started

Create the player

val player = PillarboxCastPlayer(context, Default)
player.setSessionAvailabilityListener(object : SessionAvailabilityListener {
    override fun onCastSessionAvailable() {
        // The cast session is connected.
        player.setMediaItems(mediaItems)
        player.play()
        player.prepare()
    }

    override fun onCastSessionUnavailable() {
        // The cast session has been disconnected.
    }

})
// When the player is not needed anymore.
player.release()

The SessionAvailabilityListener can also be created this way:

val player = PillarboxCastPlayer(context, Default) {
    onCastSessionAvailable {
        // The cast session is connected.
        setMediaItems(mediaItems)
        play()
        prepare()
    }

    onCastSessionUnavailable {
        // The cast session has been disconnected.
    }
}

Configure MediaItemConverter

val player = PillarboxCastPlayer(context, Default) {
    mediaItemConverter(DefaultMediaItemConverter()) // By default
}

Display a Cast button

Somewhere in your application, a Cast button has to be displayed to allow the user to connect to a Cast device.

To do this, you can use either:

The official MediaRouteButton, best suited for application using AppCompat and XML Views.
androidx-mediarouter-compose, which works best with Compose.

Local to remote playback

With PillarboxCastPlayer, it is easy to switch from local to remote, and back to local playback.

When switching to remote playback, the local playback has to be stop manually and the current state of the player has to be configured on the remote player.

val localPlayer = PillarboxExoPlayer(context, Default)
val remotePlayer = PillarboxCastPlayer(context, Default)
var currentPlayer: PillarboxPlayer = if (remotePlayer.isCastSessionAvailable()) remotePlayer else localPlayer

player.setSessionAvailabilityListener(object : SessionAvailabilityListener {
    override fun onCastSessionAvailable() {
        setCurrentPlayer(remotePlayer)
    }

    override fun onCastSessionUnavailable() {
        setCurrentPlayer(localPlayer)
    }
})

PlayerView(currentPlayer)

Additional resources

Google Cast SDK

Packages

ch.srgssr.pillarbox.cast

androidJvm