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Apple TV vs Airport Express

L

lewis.hart

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 24, 2011
16
0
West Sussex, United Kingdom
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Hi guys, I could really do with a hand in deciding what is best for my setup. It goes like this: I have a Bose set of speakers that I want to connect to my TV but also be able to wirelessly play music to them from my apple gear. If I choose the airport express I could obviously AirPlay from my MBP/iPhone/iPad and in an ideal world AirPlay to my speakers from my smart TV (we can dream!), or hook up an ape TV2 and play via TV to the speakers. Unfortunately they are the Bose companion 5 set from my old PC which means I only have USB (useless it appears) or the auxiliary 3.5mm jack on the control pod.

So hopefully you can see my dilemma, what do people think would be the best setup for me?

Thanks in advance,

Lewis

P.s if a situation where I could AirPlay to an airport express from my TV and I haven't yet seen it, I'd be grateful for a steer in the right direction! :D
 
Caliber26

Caliber26

macrumors 68020
Sep 25, 2009
2,325
3,637
Orlando, FL
I think you'll have to get some type of converter that'll allow you to go from 3.5mm to toslink/optical. Just plug into the optical output port of the AppleTV and you will be able to stream music from your iTunes and iOS devices to your speakers even if your TV is off.

Maybe something like this will help:


Good luck to ya! :)
 
zhenya

zhenya

macrumors 604
Jan 6, 2005
6,929
3,677
For audio only, I much prefer the Airport express, as my experience with the ATV is that it often slow to respond to AirPlay requests, sometimes needs rebooting, and must be hooked up to a screen for management. I also don't see a way to hook up the ATV to your existing speakers.

Edit: the cable above won't help. ATV only outputs via hdmi and toslink. There is no way to connect that directly to your speakers, short of perhaps some obscure hdmi converter or putting a DAC or amp in the chain.
 
zhenya

zhenya

macrumors 604
Jan 6, 2005
6,929
3,677
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