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When will OS X receive some AirPlay love?

B

BeachChair

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 11, 2008
590
5
Copenhagen, Denmark
OS X is getting further and behind iOS in AirPlay capability.
Apps and websites like iPhoto, YouTube could really benefit from AirPlay. Now I know you can get the same content either by pulling it on the ATV2 or pushing it from your iOS device, but finding the content is much easier on a MacBook than either iOS device.

I haven't seen anything about broader AirPlay integration in Lion so I'm a bit worried.
 
powerman

powerman

macrumors regular
Aug 19, 2010
107
0
I agree. I do not have an iOS device so airplay has not really given me anything I can't do with the atv already. When are we going to get airplay on safari, or imovie.
 
K

kuwisdelu

macrumors 65816
Jan 13, 2008
1,323
2
One thing I'd like to see is, in iOS, I can stream the audio from a movie to my speakers via AirPlay while watching the movie on the iOS device.

I'd like to be able to stream audio from a movie on OS X (even just in iTunes) to my speakers via AirPlay while watching the movie on my Mac.

I've no idea why iTunes at least doesn't have this.
 
B

BeachChair

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 11, 2008
590
5
Copenhagen, Denmark
kuwisdelu said:
One thing I'd like to see is, in iOS, I can stream the audio from a movie to my speakers via AirPlay while watching the movie on the iOS device.

I'd like to be able to stream audio from a movie on OS X (even just in iTunes) to my speakers via AirPlay while watching the movie on my Mac.

I've no idea why iTunes at least doesn't have this.
Click to expand...

But the audio is out of sync, so it's kind of useless for dialogue.
 
P

paulrbeers

macrumors 68040
Dec 17, 2009
3,963
123
There is a major flaw in playing back audio streams on computers: Sound cards. Sound cards in your PC actually do not keep perfect timed sound. If you have two computers sitting next to each other that both start a song at the exact same time, one will inevitably end before the other. Trust me, I have proven this time and time again. It might only be a fraction of a second on one song, but give it long enough time it can be whole seconds off. The only way around this is to use the same dedicated hardware on every device meant for zonal audio playback (i.e Airplay on iOS). iOS devices have virtually the same exact hardware. This is the exact same reason why companies like Sonos have dedicated hardware to do this, so that they can control exactly how fast the hardware plays back the audio. Before anyone gets on my case and states there is software out there that syncs audio playback on PC's, that is true. However, what that software does is periodically resync the audio. This leads to a slight stutter in the play back as the audio stream is resynced. I find this to be completely unacceptable.
 
B

BeachChair

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 11, 2008
590
5
Copenhagen, Denmark
paulrbeers said:
There is a major flaw in playing back audio streams on computers: Sound cards. Sound cards in your PC actually do not keep perfect timed sound. If you have two computers sitting next to each other that both start a song at the exact same time, one will inevitably end before the other. Trust me, I have proven this time and time again. It might only be a fraction of a second on one song, but give it long enough time it can be whole seconds off. The only way around this is to use the same dedicated hardware on every device meant for zonal audio playback (i.e Airplay on iOS). iOS devices have virtually the same exact hardware. This is the exact same reason why companies like Sonos have dedicated hardware to do this, so that they can control exactly how fast the hardware plays back the audio. Before anyone gets on my case and states there is software out there that syncs audio playback on PC's, that is true. However, what that software does is periodically resync the audio. This leads to a slight stutter in the play back as the audio stream is resynced. I find this to be completely unacceptable.
Click to expand...

I don't think the sound card is doing anything when playing music over Airtunes. The ones and zeros are just sent to the DAC in the Airport Express or the DAC inside the Active speakers the ATV is connected to.
 
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