January's Surface Pro Update Fixed Miracast, Hopefully for Good

January's Patch Tuesday saw a single Surface series update included in the usual gaggle of updates. The update was for the original Surface Pro.

In November 2013, I purchased the Netgear PTV3000 in hopes of taking advantage of Windows 8.1's integrated Miracast support. Miracast is the technology that allows you to magically push your device's screen directly to a Wi-Fi enabled TV. The PTV3000 connects to the TV and creates a wireless display network.

When the Surface Pro (version 1) first released it worked beautifully with Miracast, but then somewhere along the line another update from Microsoft broke the function. After much research and troubleshooting I was able to fix Miracast on the Surface Pro myself by replacing a driver with an older one. You can read all about it here: Getting it to Work: Miracast, Windows 8.1, and a Plain Old Surface Pro, Version 1.

The fix worked for me, and others, but some just couldn't get it to work. The fix was unsupported by Microsoft, so there was very little else to be done except cross your fingers and hope.

I've been worried that future Surface Pro updates would overwrite my driver replacement and I'd have to go through the procedure each time the device updated. But, this month's Surface Pro update seems to fix the issue completely. And, it also seems that Miracast works even better than before. The wireless display is more stable and shows less lag time between the device and the remote TV screen.

The wife and I enjoyed the latest episode of the BBC original Sherlock last night with the Surface Pro sitting on my bed stand pushing the streaming video across the room to the TV.

Hopefully, the update works in all situations and you'll have the same success. Let me know if it doesn't.