I used to have a “dumb” TV and a 10m long HDMI cable running from my PC to the TV which allowed me to pick it as a source. Then on Windows 10 I’d just duplicate my screen and tada, I could watch anything on my TV – and control my PC with a wireless mouse and keyboard I’d keep close to the TV.

Except now I switched to a smart TV, and my hdmi cable is not recognized. I tried everything, and I think it’s because it’s an old 1.x cable and the TV, understandably, needs a 2.0 or more recent. Doesn’t help that sellers don’t seem to indicate which version their cables are. Of those that I could find, a cable of such length starts at 100$ (2.1 version) and there’s no way I’m dropping that much, it’s a third of the price of the TV itself lol.

And then I got to thinking, this is 2021 and both my PC and TV are connected to high-speed wifi… do I really need a cable? But alas, my TV only supports chromecast (as if I want to transit through google) and it doesn’t really solve my problem. Chromecast just streams something to your TV. If I send it a youtube video, it will open the youtube app which has ads (as ublock on firefox blocks all youtube ads).

I’m also trying screenmirroring.app and it works, but again I can’t control the PC from the TV monitor – not like the screen projection works on Windows (think of it as having two monitors like pro-gamers, except the second monitor is a TV somewhere else in the room). The big drawback however is it doesn’t support sound, and I would like to play sound from my TV. Again, something that is pretty much window’s native feature to set up a second screen is what I would really want. without dropping 200$ on a cable lol

With that said I have to admit I’m completely behind on casting technologies and have no idea what’s available today. It doesn’t have to be a second monitor, right? It just has to work like one.

Thank you very much to anyone who can help me out 🙏