As usual, please don't hesitate to ask questions about VLC, VideoLAN or related projects (x264, dav1d, libbluray...)

Disclaimer: VideoLAN president

Why doesn't VLC have good support for casting? I mean LAN is in the name - I shouldn't have to use a half-baked Chromecast solution that's proprietary, can't be a server and can't display most subtitles.

Casting is generally hard; the protocols are undocumented and proprietary in general and are usually quite limited in the formats they support and function in ways that are not necessarily conducive to casting content that isn't hosted on the web.

It wouldn't be that hard to make an open casting protocol.

It wouldn't, but people want to cast to devices they already have. Getting manufacturers (and other software makers) on board is not easy…

Personally I would buy any device that offered a working casting solution for VLC.

I haven't tried Windows or Linux versions of VLC in a long time, but the "Renderer" option in macOS VLC seems to work well.

Unrelated: Have you tried catt? https://github.com/skorokithakis/catt