Shouldn't we simply use availability/connect() for RM API?

Not sure I understand 100% what you mean by the question :)

I think the statement below summarizes my thoughts well so far.
The background discovery for remote playback of a media element will happen if and only if:
- when the background discovery is available on the platform (e.g. not on low ram Android devices).
- the media element has a compatible source
- the media element is visible (or even only when its default remote playback / cast button is visible) or there's an alive RemotePlaybackAvailability object tied to the media element and the frame it belongs to is visible

connect() usually means active device discovery while the picker UI is open.

Sorry, my question was a bit too short :) When using the Remote Playback API, shouldn't we start discovery only if connect() or getAvailabalitiy() is called?

Using the Remote Playback API is totally agnostic to the default media flinging feature here - if the website is using default controls or is hiding the controls but we show the overlay, it doesn't matter if the API is being used or not; if the Cast button could be visible, Chrome needs to do discovery.

And yes, for RM API we will only trigger discovery on connect() / getAvailability(). The statement in #0 is just to underline that the media element visibility can't be used in general to stop it.

Moving this nonessential bug to the next milestone.

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This issue has been moved once and is lower than Pri-1. Removing the milestone.

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Anton, is this something you can consider as part of the rewrite of flinging?

This issue has been Available for over a year. If it's no longer important or seems unlikely to be fixed, please consider closing it out. If it is important, please re-triage the issue.

Sorry for the inconvenience if the bug really should have been left as Available.

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Thomas - would you be able to check to see if the implementation has a power-saving optimization like this? if not, it seems like a good feature request. thanks!