I use one of laptops laying around the house that wasn't used anymore, connected the TV via HDMI and bought a bluetooth keyboard with a built in track pad. The bluetooth keyboard works as my remote now, and it works very reliably - not just to stream content or play music, but its great to even do split screen, shop together/ look up something together while sitting on the couch, typing on the keyboard/using a trackpad is infinitely better than using the onscreen keyboards on smart TVs/roku etc.

Apple’s AirPlay works okay. I like good old HDMI cables, they work reliably.

I’ve had terrible latency and connectivity issues with both chromecast and apple tv. Audio lagging, randomly deciding not to be discoverable, etc.

A cable always works

Regarding your AirPlay woes - have you checked the health (strength) and throughput of the wifi signal?

I have a lot of noisy stuff around my house so one thing I did was hardwire my AppleTV to be one less wifi device. That resolved all of my issues.

Additionally, I later ended up adding more Wifi APs to provide consistent throughput across the house. Previously I had "slow" zones. Not really dead zones, but annoyingly slow enough to force you to switch temporarily to 4G.

If you can't hardwire the device specifically, consider repositioning the WiFi AP closer, add/or add another AP if you are able to.

Hope this helps.

I'm not a Chromecast user so I can't say what is a good alternative but I use a Roku and am pretty satisfied with it. My "smart" TV has apps but they're hot garbage so I keep it offline and just use the Roku.

Keep in mind Roku shows ads on your home screen and gathers tracking data, but this can be blocked with pihole.

I use an old Linux box. Works great for Netflix and Amazon Prime. I'm sure it's not for everyone, though.

Netflix only streams 720p unless you use Edge on some edition of Win10

Unless you're sitting closer than two screen diagonals to your TV, it's a scientific fact that even with 20/20 vision you can't tell the difference between SD and HD.

Please reference the NHK's book on their analogue HD technology, Hi-Vision Technology, where they go into the psychovisual research extensively.

I used to think that too but when watching GoPro footage over the years there is always a visible difference between 720p and 1080p. And I think 4k is also noticeable.

I agree they are all noticeable, at the proper viewing distance. These are scientific facts. Ask yourself, what's the smallest angle the human eye can subtend? All other factors fall into place once you've calculated this.

I didn't want to go into details, but I think we actually get Netflix in 1080(p?) using either Firefox or Chrome, but Amazon Prime looks like 720p using Firefox.

If you know how let me know. There used to be an addon that mimic'd a header it was looking for but I think netflix fixed that loophole. Im not sure if there is a way to verify the info during playback anymore?

EDIT - From their website (https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23931):

Resolution Windows computers support streaming in the following browser resolutions:

    Google Chrome up to 720p

    Internet Explorer up to 1080p

    Microsoft Edge up to 4K*

    Mozilla Firefox up to 720p

    Opera up to 720p

    Windows 8 app up to 1080p

    Windows 10 app up to 4K*

Roku is an option. Supports both Chromecast and AirPlay.

if apple is not a problem for you, their appletv hardware is pretty awesome. I have one connected to every tv.

There's Miracast, but it only does screen mirroring.