VMware Horizon View and Google Chromecast

I have recently purchased a Google Chromecast dongle and wondered who it would work alongside Horizon View Blast HTML access to a VDI desktop.

For those who haven’t yet heard about Chromcast check out this link >> http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/

Essentially it is a small HDMI dongle that allows you to stream or “Cast” as Google call it streaming media from certain applications and tabs from the Google Chrome web browser. 

I wanted to check out how this functionality would work with Blast the HTML access to your VDI desktop built into View, now I must start with caveating that this is not listed as being supported anywhere but potentially in the future I can see this as an interesting use case especially in education.

I started by connecting to my view desktop using chrome

You are then able to select the cast option in the top right of your browser and select your chrome castdevice, note you need to have installed the chrome cast plugin into your browser from here first >> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-cast/boadgeojelhgndaghljhdicfkmllpafd 

You will then shortly see that the contents of your browser screen will then display on your device with the Chromecast dongle connected

Whilst this does work there is a small lag between typing and it appearing on the Chromecast connected device, it maybe good enough for projecting a presentation but not much more at this stage. It certainly shows promise and is extremely easy to connect and cast your desktop in this manner. 

It is also possible to Cast your whole desktop using the experimental feature shown below

And by doing this you can connect using the standard View Client to your desktop as well. The lag when doing it this way does seem to be a little bit less but still noticeable. 

Of course you can already do this today with support on Apple devices and Apple TV but what I like about Chromecast is it is less device centric and you can use a number of devices with the same connectivity medium. I look forward to see how this improves and is supported by more applications in the future.