AirFlick Offers Video Streaming from Mac to Apple TV over AirPlay

[MacRumors]

As followup to the reverse engineering of AirPlay, Erica Sadun has released an alpha version of a new tool called AirFlick. The previous tool allowed iOS 4.2 users to stream video to their Mac.

This new tool called AirFlick now allows Mac users to stream video content to their Apple TVs. This includes both locally saved files as well as streaming from files hosted on the internet.

It also allows you to open videos located on the Internet by pasting a URL and clicking the play button. I was able to watch a number of Internet Archive (archive.org) mp4 videos on a big screen TV by browsing that website, selecting URLs, and opening them with AirFlick.

It's still an early alpha version. Still, it's an interesting proof of concept and hopefully someone will pick it up and run with it, or maybe Apple will provide this functionality themselves in the future.

Article Link: AirFlick Offers Video Streaming from Mac to Apple TV over AirPlay

 

[GeekLawyer]

Apple needs to plug these holes with their own solution.

Don't get me wrong: my hat is off to the hackers and devs. But a fully integrated solution would be nice.

 

[tripjammer]

Apple is a perfectionist...they will do it when they perfect it.

At least we know great things are possible in the IOS MacOS universe.

 

[clight3521]

Huh?

I'm confused...i thought Macs can already stream to Apple TV (even 1st gen ATVs) via iTunes? What's the big news here - other than streaming from non-local sources?

 

[griz]

I'm confused...i thought Macs can already stream to Apple TV (even 1st gen ATVs) via iTunes? What's the big news here - other than streaming from non-local sources?

Yea, I'm wondering the same thing. I thought the whole point of the ATV was to stream content from your Mac.

 

[OllyW]

I'm confused...i thought Macs can already stream to Apple TV (even 1st gen ATVs) via iTunes? What's the big news here - other than streaming from non-local sources?

It means you can stream from other apps and play non-iTunes compatible media.

 

[timerollson]

I'm confused...i thought Macs can already stream to Apple TV (even 1st gen ATVs) via iTunes? What's the big news here - other than streaming from non-local sources?

Yeah... I don't get it? I was streaming The Social Network via Airplay to my 2nd generation Apple TV this weekend. It was an .mp4 file. Unless this is referring to .avi files I thought ATVs had that already???

 

[Tilpots]

I'm confused...i thought Macs can already stream to Apple TV (even 1st gen ATVs) via iTunes? What's the big news here - other than streaming from non-local sources?

Currently, the AppleTV will only play iTunes content streamed from a Mac. This hack opens up any video content to stream from a Mac to the AppleTV.

 

[darrellishere]

Dose it or will it ever play MKV's 1080p files ??? Thanks

 

[tripjammer]

You can go to a website that has IOS compatible video and stream it to a APPLE TV 2. This was never possible on the old AppleTV.

its using Airplay\AirVideo

 

[Lixivial]

Still, it's an interesting proof of concept and hopefully someone will pick it up and run with it ...

Hopefully. Releasing a proof of concept like this is one thing, embedding ads in a proof of concept? ...Yeah. No.

 

[goobot]

doesnt find my atv.

 

[TurboLag]

Dose it or will it ever play MKV's 1080p files ??? Thanks

No, and no.

What it does however, is open the door for a transcoder to transcode a 1080 mkv to an mp4 and stream to the AppleTV, without the need for jailbreaking it.

 

[hitekalex]

It means you can stream from other apps and play non-iTunes compatible media.

No it doesn't - according to the article, only ATV-compatible H.264 video is supported. Now, if AirFlick indeed transcoded non-H.264 video into compatible format and streamed it via AirPlay - that would actually be useful.

 

[m2nal]

this is really useful for when i wanna stream music video content from a site like vevo.com for instance. Currently I do it via my JB'd iPad using airvideoenabler hack to the ATV via Vevo's app but that it still is pretty flaky.....I really do Apple brings their own solution to the table in future updates.

 

[rorschach]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Apple needs to at the very least allow streaming from the QuickTime player app. It's ridiculous to have to import videos into iTunes just to stream them to the tv via AirPlay and then delete them.

 

[ferrous]

Retarded solution

I'm sorry but Apple TV is a retarded product, my PS3 has been streaming videos, photos, etc. to my TV for years now. I'm very confused what Apple TV is for. I can rent, stream videos from Netflix, or even my Satellite provider, too... It's nothing but a waste of money.

 

[morespce54]

I'm confused...i thought Macs can already stream to Apple TV (even 1st gen ATVs) via iTunes? What's the big news here - other than streaming from non-local sources?

Nope, only iTunes-friendly files (that is, files that are listed in your iTunes library, so no .avi, .wmv, .flv, etc. without prior conversion)

 

[res1233]

I'm sorry but Apple TV is a retarded product, my PS3 has been streaming videos, photos, etc. to my TV for years now. I'm very confused what Apple TV is for. I can rent, stream videos from Netflix, or even my Satellite provider, too... It's nothing but a waste of money.

You can use it to stream Netflix directly to your TV, and at 99$, it's pretty cheap. Plus it's tightly integrated with iTunes, which is a plus. I wouldn't get one honestly, but that's because the TV we have doesn't have HDMI.

 

[zin]

Nope, only iTunes-friendly files (that is, files that are listed in your iTunes library, so no .avi, .wmv, .flv, etc. without prior conversion)

I still am having some trouble understanding this whole AirPlay thing. So does this mean I can't stream movies taken from my iPhone since it wasn't purchased from the store?

 

[OGDaniel]

Am I the only one who doesn't really get this? Why can't you just connect to iTunes? This software is just unneeded, although I guess it is cool that the dev did it, but why would you need this?

 

[BornAgainMac]

I'm sorry but Apple TV is a retarded product, my PS3 has been streaming videos, photos, etc. to my TV for years now. I'm very confused what Apple TV is for. I can rent, stream videos from Netflix, or even my Satellite provider, too... It's nothing but a waste of money.

DRM iTunes content? I know.... I know. Insert DVD, Rip, repeat.

 

[lowbatteries]

I'm sorry but Apple TV is a retarded product, my PS3 has been streaming videos, photos, etc. to my TV for years now.

Actually, the Apple TV is quite fast .... And the PS3's interface is horrible.

I still am having some trouble understanding this whole AirPlay thing. So does this mean I can't stream movies taken from my iPhone since it wasn't purchased from the store?

You can stream any iTunes-compatible video file throught iTunes to the Apple TV. This includes iPhone videos. It does NOT have to be purchased through Apple.

Am I the only one who doesn't really get this? Why can't you just connect to iTunes? This software is just unneeded, although I guess it is cool that the dev did it, but why would you need this?

It's a proof-of-concept. Erica Sadun doesn't make finished products much. One thing it can do is play non-local media, which wasn't available before.

You know who needs to hire Erica? Airfoil. This would be a killer feature, as well as her other recent AirPlayer application - so that AirPlay could go from iPhone to Mac, from Mac to Apple TV, and even from Mac to Mac.

 

[ScottDrummer]

Many HDTV brands have this capability built in, using DNLA (Samsung's is Mediashare), you do of course require a Mac side daemon to share the files, I recommend Eyeconnect or tvmobili.
I have this working using a MBP with Eyeconnect and a samsung 50", over the network, most formats including mkv files are supported. btw you can rename mkv files to avi for them to work with most media players.

 

[zin]

You can stream any iTunes-compatible video file throught iTunes to the Apple TV. This includes iPhone videos. It does NOT have to be purchased through Apple.

Thanks for the clarification.