AirParrot

AirParrot sends your screen or a media file to a TV across the room without a cable. Pick a receiver from the list, choose what to send, and the picture appears on an Apple TV, a Chromecast, an AirPlay speaker or another computer running a receiver application.

The point is that a PC cannot do this on its own. AirPlay is not built into it, and the wireless display standard it does support is not understood by an Apple TV. This program bridges that gap, which is the entire reason it exists.

Three modes sit behind one window. Mirror copies the whole desktop. Extend turns the TV into a second monitor, so you can drag a window onto it and keep working. And the media mode sends a single video or audio file directly to the receiver, which plays it on its own while your computer carries on doing something else.

That third mode is the one people underuse and the one that looks best.

Mirroring the desktop, or just one application

Full-screen mirroring in AirParrot runs at up to 1080p and does not touch your display settings, so disconnecting puts everything back the way it was. More useful is the option to mirror one application instead of the whole desktop. Pick the presentation and the room sees the presentation, not your email arriving in the corner.

On a Chromecast that is a real expansion of what the hardware does, since casting on its own is limited to a browser tab. Even a media centre with its own casting support cannot put an arbitrary application on the TV.

There is a real regression to know about. The quality slider that let you drop mirroring to a lower setting on a weak network is gone, and people who leaned on it to keep a shaky connection alive have nothing to replace it with.

On a congested network you get whatever the application decides, and the only cures are moving closer or moving to 5GHz.

Extended desktop without a cable

The extend mode suits desk workers rather than film watchers. A TV or a second computer becomes an additional monitor, with no adapter, no HDMI run across the floor and no change to your display configuration beyond the extra screen appearing.

Latency rules out anything you interact with quickly. Video dragged onto the extended screen stutters and a game is hopeless, but reference material, a dashboard or a call window sit there happily.

Streaming a file instead of mirroring it

Select a video or audio file and AirParrot hands it to the receiver, which decodes and plays it. Because the file goes across intact rather than as a re-encoded picture of your screen, the result keeps its original quality, carries 5.1 surround where the track has it, and reaches 4K on hardware that supports it. Format conversion happens behind the scenes, so a container the receiver would normally refuse still plays, which is more than most casting players manage.

Playback can then be controlled from the TV remote. Setup is quicker than a DLNA media server, and it works with receivers that ignore DLNA entirely.

Receivers, multiple destinations and connecting

AirParrot lists Apple TV from the older generations through current hardware, Google Cast devices, AirPlay speakers, HomePods, and software receivers running on another computer. Several can be driven at once, so a screen goes to two televisions, or audio goes to speakers in three rooms. Quick Connect codes and Bluetooth discovery handle the case where the network isolates devices from each other and nothing shows up in the list, which is the usual failure on guest and corporate networks.

If all you want is the opposite direction, sending a phone or tablet screen to your computer, LonelyScreen turns the PC into an AirPlay receiver and does not overlap with this at all.

Conclusion

AirParrot suits someone who regularly puts a laptop screen on a television and is tired of carrying an adapter around, and it suits a home with a Chromecast better than it suits one with an Apple TV, because it lifts the cheaper hardware closest to the expensive hardware’s abilities. The file streaming mode is the part most people end up using daily.

Anyone on a crowded wireless network should test before committing, since the missing quality control leaves no way to trade sharpness for stability. And anyone who only needs occasional mirroring may find a cable still wins.