Mirroring PC display to TV over WiFi via Roku stick.

[#1]

I have a desktop PC (Windows 10) located in an upstairs bedroom and want to mirror the display to a TV downstairs in the living room.

The PC is connected to a Plusnet One hub/router using Gigabit wired Ethernet.

The TV connects to a Roku Express 3900 stick using HDMI.

The Roku connects to the router using a 2.4GHz WiFi channel.

Normally WiFi on the PC is turned off since it uses wired ethernet.

After reading up about Roku mirroring I discovered that it only works if I enable WiFi on the PC. The WiFi channel does not need to be permanently connected to the network. Apparently it's only required for the initial device discovery phase. If I do manually connect it to the router over WiFi, it does so over a 5GHz channel. It seems to make no differemce.

With the PC WiFi enabled and not connected,  I can run a browser on the PC and mirror the display to the TV. So far so good.

The problem comes when I try to use a VPN to connect the PC to the internet.

When I launch the VPN (I use Proton VPN) , the Roku stick / TV display disconnects.

I have been unable to figure out how to get it to reconnect while the VPN is actve.

Is there an easy solution?

I have read that it may be possible to create a WiFi hotspot on the PC and use that to connect to the Roku stick.

Is there a simpler way?

[#2]

@briank 

is 'Allow LAN connections' enabled in your Proton VPN Advanced settings ?

[#3]

A good suggestion.

I have just checked and found that 'Allow LAN Connections' is disabled.

Unfortunately the free version of Proton VPN does dot allow it to be changed. Doh!

[#4]

Proton VPN Plus that supports LAN Connections is currently available at 70% off (£2.39/month) so I guess I could upgrade.

It would be nice to make sure it does actually fix the issue first.

[#5]

It would be nice to make sure it does actually fix the issue first.

'fraid I cant answer that, I dont use Proton.

Screen mirroring is a LAN connection and from what I can see, the 'Allow LAN connections' prevents any LAN traffic going down the Proton VPN tunnel...

[#6]

I have been playing around a bit more with display mirroring from my PC to the TV over WiFi via the Roku stick.

I figured out how to redirect the sound output from my PC to the TV.

It works ok - although the display is slightly garbled when also sending sound.

I am guessing this is because the Roku is using a relatively slow 2.4GHz WiFi channel to connect to the router.

While doing this I was surprised to see a neighbour's 'LG OLED 35G36LA' TV in the list of display devices that I could attempt to connect to.

There seems to be nothing to stop me from attempting to mirror the display and/or sound from my PC to his TV.

There is no request for a passcode.

My Roku stick has a Mirroring configuration option under Settings that can be set to “Prompt” or “Always allow".

The user guide for the LG suggests it will always display a pop-up message asking to accept or block a screen sharing request.

It seems to me that this could create a potential privacy issue.

[#7]

I have an lg old and yes, it does always put up a popup on the TV to accept the screen mirroring request