Sorry bro, I wasn't very specific. You type in ps ax | grep ffmpeg into terminal, running on the Mac that is serving up the stream. The pain with that method is that you have to initiate streaming on the iPhone app.
That unofficial client I linked to is nice because it can initiate the streaming without ever having to open (or even install) the iPhone app. Just click the button that says "servers", and add your server (if you generated a Server PIN from within the AirVideo Server's preferences, it'll make it easier to retrieve your server's credentials--just type the PIN into the box asking for the PIN and click "Retrieve"). After adding your server, click "Connect" in the main window, and select a video. In the application slide-out drawer, click "Play with Live Conversion"...this will open the video in QuickTime X. Then get the url of that stream by clicking Window-->Show Movie Properties. Type that url into Erica Sadun's app and you're good to go.
I've never once had a need to stream from my Mac to theTV. If it's on my Mac it's probably already on my
TV.
What I really want is to stream movies FROM myTV or Mac TO my iPhone. It'd be great to save spacing on my iOS device and just stream the content when I need it.
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
Surely you jest, as it would be a little difficult to stream fully uncompressed video over a standard WiFi connection. However, wireless HDMI is being developed and currently marketed ( http://www.amazon.com/Gefen-EXT-WHD...BPPM/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1292891494&sr=8-6 ), but YMMV as to its cost and usability. There is also Intel's WiDi but the adapter box for WiDi (that thing you connect to the TV) is just about as expensive as the new Apple TV (and I'm pretty certain that WiDi makes heavy use of compression, so it doesn't fit your decoding model). There are also devices that will re-transmit analog video wirelessly to a receiver box on your TV, Radio Shack use to sell one for not very much money and the quality was okay (for analog SD content).
I've never once had a need to stream from my Mac to theTV. If it's on my Mac it's probably already on my
TV.
What I really want is to stream movies FROM myTV or Mac TO my iPhone. It'd be great to save spacing on my iOS device and just stream the content when I need it.
Ok, by doing this hack, you can stream ANY video format sitting on your Mac to your AppleTV. I'm testing out an mkv file right now, and it works like a charm!
Download the unofficial Mac AirVideo client here:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6713110/MacAirVideoClient/Site/Download.html
Start playback of a video using live conversion from within this unofficial client, it should hand off the streaming video to Quicktime X.
Inspect the stream by viewing the Movie Inspector (check the "Window" menu for Quicktime). Write down that url.
Paste that url into Erica Sadun's Airflick app and boom now your AppleTV can basically play any video you throw at it! Looking forward to someone streamlining the process into a neat little app.
I'm considering reposting this in the TUAW comments in case anyone else finds it handy.
OPTIONAL
One extra little note: you don't have to necessarily download the unofficial Mac AirVideo client above. You can instead begin playback of a video from within the AirVideo iphone app, then go to the mac serving up the stream, and type "ps ax | grep ffmpeg", and grab the alphanumeric string following the --conversion-id flag.
Then paste into AirFlick the following:
http://[YOUR-SERVER'S-IP-ADDRESS]:45631/live-playback-2.4.0/index_[CONVERSION-ID].m3u8