Streaming to a TV set

Watching railcam on your television

Watching railcam on a large screen is great experience, especially if it also has a good speaker system. Imagine watching a class 68 leaving crewe with a rumble that shakes the foundations of your house with a picture that is 50” large. All this can be yours.

The easiest way to watch railcam on your television is to connect an HDMI cable between the two. Most laptops have an HDMI socket on them and quite a few desktops will also have a ‘spare’ one. So just buy a cable long enough to reach between the computer and the television and off you go.

There are a couple of things to bear in mine when doing this. The easiest thing to do is to choose display ‘mirroring’ in control panel/preferences, then everything that appears on the main computer screen will also appear on the television set - this is usually the default. It is also possible to treat the TV as a separate display, meaning you can use the main laptop for working on if it’s not too distracting from the trains. You might also need to redirect the sound from the computer’s main sound system into the television to use those big speakers. On a Mac, click on the speaker icon in the menu bar and choose the television set for sound output. Something similar may be needed for Windows but I’m not sure.

Tablets and phones usually don’t have HDMI sockets (they’re quite big) but all is not lost … You can buy a small device called a ‘Chromecast’ that will allow you to do it wirelessly. Chromecast also works with computers so might avoid you tripping over the long wire going across your floor from the last paragraph. Chromecast is also a Google device so, although it works nicely with Android phones, I have no idea if it works with iPhones. Apple devices might have their own solution to this.

With the Chromecast plugged into a spare HDMI port on you television set it up following the instructions that came with it. Then whenever a supported application spots that chrome cast is available an icon (like a rectangle with a fuzzy edge at the bottom left) appears. Press that and the video from that application will appear on the television set, complete with sound. This works easily for the YouTube app where several railcam streams are easily available. Sound will automatically go with the video and you can still use your phone/tablet for other things.

For computers you can cast screens to chromecast too, but only if you use the Chrome (or Chromium) browser. The chromecast icon will appear in the railcam window, just press it and select the name of your chrome cast device, the video will then appear in the TV. If that’s not there, the icon often appears near the top right of the browser, you might need to press the ‘full-screen’ button on the camera player to get it to fill the TV screen - it won’t fill the computer screen, just the TV. Which is helpful.

More modern "smart" TVs often have something similar to this feature built-in so you don't need to buy anything at all. If the 'cast' icon appears on your phone then pressing it might bring up a destination called something like "WebOS TV". Choose this and the railcam screen will appear on the TV regardless of what else you are watching. This doesn't work with of the railcam players. I've found brid.tv to be the most reliable.