Cast Videos to Your Roku with Firefox Beta for Android

October 4, 2014 - 10:51 -- RokuGuide

Cast Videos to Your Roku with Firefox Beta for Android Roku users with Android devices can now "cast" videos from a web browser to a Roku-connected TV. Although not quite as simple as Chromecast, and lacking apps specifically designed for the app, you may find this as a convenient workaround that lets you watch videos on your TV that are not otherwise available through Roku.

To cast videos to your Roku, you will need to install Roku Beta for Android from the Google Play Store and then install and open the Firefox channel on your Roku. To cast the video, start playing it from the Firefox Beta browser (as noted below, you will need to wait for any pre-roll advertisements to finish). Tap the playing video and a "cast" icon will appear in the lower left corner if the video can be cast. Tap that icon, select the device you want to cast to, and the video should start playing on your TV. The video in the browser will stop. Once the video is playing on your connected TV, you can navigate away from the video in the Firefox Beta browser and navigate through the video using your Roku remote.

I found the setup process to be easy, and casting worked very smoothly, although there are some annoyances (remember, this is still a beta product). At the start of each cast, I had to select which of my three Roku devices to cast to. Unfortunately, they are labeled identically in Firefox, so I had to use trial and error to find the Roku I was currently using. You may need to start playing the video in Firefox before casting - this is apparently due to website designs where the video is not actually loaded until you start to play. Also, if there is a pre-roll advertisement, you will have to wait for that to play out in Firefox before casting the actual video to your Roku. And, finally, the fact that only MP4 videos are supported means that many videos cannot be cast; this, however, is a limitation of the Roku, and is not a Firefox weakness.

There are also some limitations worth noting. Currently, it only works on Android devices, although support for Firefox for Desktop is reportedly in the works. Your Android device and your Roku device must both be on the same network - you can't sit at home casting videos to your friends miles in a different location. Also, you probably won't know whether a video is capable of being cast or not until you play it in the browser and check to see if a cast icon is available.

CNN and MetaCafe are known to work with this app. Hulu (the free version), probably the most-requested content for Roku, does not.

For more information on this app, including a link to install it on your Roku, visit the RokuGuide.com Firefox channel page.