Qualcomm has a plan to liberate 4K video from high-end smartphones, and it involves a Chromecast-like prototype TV dongle.
The prototype was revealed at a Qualcomm industry event, where it was spotted by analyst Patrick Moorhead. In an e-mail, Moorhead said he expects Qualcomm to offer the design to manufacturers, in hopes of having them build their own 4K streaming devices.
Qualcomm primarily sees the device as a way for users to beam homemade 4K video to their televisions, but it could eventually be used to stream 4K content from online sources such as Netflix. The dongle could also double as a wireless dock for phones and tablets, mirroring the display onto the big screen.
The prototype dongle is based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor, but doesn’t require a Snapdragon-based phone or tablet on the other end. It uses the basic Universal Plug and Play protocol to connect with other devices, and Qualcomm is working on supplementary software to let the dongle work with existing Android media players such as BubbleUPnP, VLC and MXPlayer.
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