Clarification: I normally physically log on to and play media on host A using mpv, displaying the video on an external monitor HDMI-A-2 and playing the audio from host A’s headphone jack connected to external speakers. Today, I tried not physically logging on to host A, but remotely logging in from host B (my phone) using ssh from the same network and running the mpv command from host B. mpv then displays the video on the expected display HDMI-A-2, but it doesn’t play any audio.
Symptomatically, if I haven’t logged on physically to host A, mpv only displays video, plays no audio and throws errors. Why do I need to be logged in on host A for mpv to be able to access audio? You’d think a video feed would be more guarded than an audio one. But maybe this isn’t about security at all? Please enlighten me! 😊
I first thought you were trying to stream over SSH, which funnily enough was exactly what I was trying to do at the time.
But you’re trying to start it up to play on the remote machine, aren’t you. This makes sense if you’re accessing the laptop from your phone while sat on the couch! If the default is pipewire or pulseaudio, it might be unable to find it without an active user session - trying forcing alsa with
--ao=alsa