When you cast from BBC iPlayer, what you're doing is sending an instruction from BBC iPlayer over your WiFi network to the Chromecast dongle connected to your TV to fetch a particular programme directly from BBC iPlayer. Google are working towards supporting Amazon Fire devices. Chrome browser on a laptop or desktop with the Chromecast extension enabled.
How to stream any video from a Windows PC or Mac to a TV via Chromecast: We tried a bunch of apps we found recommended online, and this is what we found best - it is very simple, very reliable, and worked without any delay or other issues. You can use Chrome to do this as well, but the experience was a little sluggish for us. Doing this is pretty easy too, though we're going to recommend you install one more application.
That's an easy way to get content from your browser to the TV, but what about locally saved videos? For example, you might have personal holiday videos that you want to put up on the TV screen. This usually doesn't cause issues with viewing though. Not all sites support this though - for example, if you're watching a show on Amazon Prime Video then you'll have to mirror the tab, instead of casting the video.
Download and install it from here if you haven't already, and then read on to know what to do next. The easiest way to send an online video to your Chromecast is to use the Google Chrome browser. If you want to stream content from your phones to the Chromecast, whether you are using Android or iOS, the steps are pretty straightforward, but what do you do if you're trying to get videos from your laptop (or desktop PC) to the television screen? Actually, there's a lot of different ways to accomplish this, and we've tried extensions, standalone applications, and so on, until we realised that the easiest way is frankly to just use the Chrome browser. And the best part about it is that as long as you've got a working Wi-Fi network in the place, you've got a whole host of options when it comes to getting your videos onto the big screen. One of our favourite gadgets to have around the house is the Google Chromecast - the little dongle is affordable, and really useful if you like getting your content on the big screen.