Big Sur Screen Mirroring Issues

As lots of people, including me, have been having problems mirroring or casting their Mac displays to a TV, I bought a device called an Anycast. First of all I must point out that I don't work for any company selling these devices. I’m only posting this to help people with problems they have had, similar to the problems I have had. Here’s how I got on.

I forgot to time how long it took to set this device up but it didn't work immediately. 

The instructions were printed on a small piece of paper divided into ten pages, in a tiny font. These instructions are not actually for the device that I bought. The instructions begin with the heading “Miradaptor For HDTV”. There is a picture of a start screen with a purple background and the heading “Screening mode”. Brief instructions are given for iOS and Android, but none for macOS. 

My MATSUI TV Model M22DIGB19 doesn’t provide power via USB, and I found the three ended cable (microUSB, full size USB, WiFi receiver) which connects the Anycast to a power supply was too short to reach any of my electrical sockets! I plugged it into a power bank instead. While connected, I left the power bank charging as well. 

Another problem is that my HDMI port and all the other connectors are around the back of the TV, in a recess. The Anycast type device is so long that the Micro USB plug comes up against the edge of the recess, so that the Anycast device is being pushed out at a slight angle when in use. I have now ordered an HDMI extension cable to deal with this problem, in case the micro USB connector breaks! 

The device is marked as Anycast, but it may be a copy of the genuine Anycast, because their setup web page says Neatcast. The startup screen looks quite different from the screen in the instructions. These instructions show a screen with a purple background and an Internet Explorer icon. The actual screen displayed for this device has a blue background with pictures of an iPhone and an Android phone. It displays a Quad IP address (i.e. made up only of numbers), as well as a password and a QR code for the IP address. The user has to go to the IP address to connect the Anycast device to their home Wi-Fi network. This looks similar to some WiFi router settings pages. From this page the user selects their WiFi network and inputs the password.  From this screen the user can also restart the device, change the password, the language, upgrade, or reset settings.

Following all the above steps, on the bottom of the screen there is some text reading “Waiting for connection”. When I saw this I kept waiting and wondering what connection, wasn't it already connected, and what should I do next? I finally realised that it meant a connection from my Mac display. To establish this connection you use Airplay. On macOS Big Sur, you can use the Control Center icon at the top right of the screen, select Screen Mirroring, then a new item which has suddenly appeared under that menu. In my case it’s called Display_8A41 , but on a similar device it might appear as Anycast or some other name. This is also available under System Preferences/Display. I assume that’s also how to access it under previous macOS versions which I don’t have much experience with. As for the audio, this has to be set separately, but users have a choice of sound through the TV or from the Mac itself. Often it’s not clear where the audio will come out. There are error messages saying that Display_8A41 has no audio output ports. Often, if you select Internal Speakers on the Mac while connected to the device, then it works. You can also plug in headphones to your Mac. Just experiment with the audio settings. 

After a few sessions viewing videos with this device, I got the error message “Out of range” from the TV. I changed to another power bank, then my Anycast immediately started working again. Another time, I got the same message again, then I found that simply changing the power bank didn’t work. I had to unplug everything several times, then I ended up back with the same power bank I’d used first of all. 

Unfortunately, after all this, I found out that my Apple TV+ app refused to display any videos while I had Airplay turned on! It just played the sound from the videos available on that service. I reached my Apple account and the Apple TV+ Terms and Conditions to see if my subscription only covered one display, but I couldn’t find any such restriction. As soon as I turned off Airplay, videos from Apple TV+ could be displayed once more on my Mac. 

So, that’s it! It seems that if you want to mirror your Mac display then Airplay is the answer. It’s just a question of what type of Airplay device you use. You may not be able to view Apple TV+ on it, though. 

I bought a special Thunderbolt to HDMI cable for my MacBook Air (early 2014) running Big Sur because I couldn't find a way to mirror my screen onto a TV. It took over an hour to get a picture on the night of Saturday February 27 to Sunday February 28, but I was only able to watch it for one session lasting several hours. The following night I couldn't get it to work and no matter what I do, including following official advice from Apple, it's never worked since then! Finally, I decided to buy an Anycast USB device from eBay. I'll let you know how I get on after it arrives.

I only got my Mac 23 days ago. What is this Firewall you're talking about? Is it installed by default?