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I understand that a straight port of the new AppleTV OS may not be possible for the old AppleTVs. But I'm a bit angry that they aren't at least enabling Airplay and TV show rental playback on the old AppleTVs.
 
I'm still maintaining that AirPlay holds a LOT more in store than just video streaming.

iOS 5 will be all about streaming your content via wifi to other devices. That includes apps...for example, imagine using your iPhone to control an Angry Birds game on your TV screen.

When I first heard something like this a while back with just Apple TV I thought...ehhhh, nothing great do you shake the whole TV??

But reading your comment and using the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch as a remote (WiiMote) I can TOTALLY see this as Apple's step into the Video Game console!!

This would totally kick other consoles in the butt allowing you to essentially play any games you have anywhere on the go and at home.


Apple as a Media center....not a particular device but all of them.
 
When I first heard something like this a while back with just Apple TV I thought...ehhhh, nothing great do you shake the whole TV??

But reading your comment and using the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch as a remote (WiiMote) I can TOTALLY see this as Apple's step into the Video Game console!!

This would totally kick other consoles in the butt allowing you to essentially play any games you have anywhere on the go and at home.


Apple as a Media center....not a particular device but all of them.

I wrote a whole post on this yesterday.

Imagine this...

You're watching reruns of Arrested Development on Hulu Plus on your iPad, and you walk into your living room, hit the AirPlay button, and it's streaming on your TV.

Or you're reading a comic book from Marvel or Comics+ or whatever other app you prefer. Hit AirPlay, and you're reading your comics on your TV, using gestures on your iDevice to flip through the pages, and pinch to zoom.

Or your favorite baseball team is playing, but the game is not showing in your area, so you pull up MLB At Bat on your iPad, stream the game to your TV, and the iPad still shows all the stats of the game.

Or (here's my favorite one) you're playing Star Wars: Trench Run on your iPhone. You hit the AirPlay button in the app, and, boom, you're racing down the Death Star trench on your big screen while using the iPhone as a controller. (SW:TR already does this on a computer, to a less elegant degree.) Taking it to the next level, you also have your iPad there next you, and you use it to control speed, shields, your ship's power settings...

Granted, as was brought up in the comments to that post, there would be issues with latency, but I think the idea has legs.
 
That's what I am wondering..
This would definitely make things more interesting. Kind of convoluted- feeding video to the iOS device (likely via WiFi) and then back out to the :apple:TV- but would seemingly be a way to get around having to pre-convert things and be able to transcode them. Of course, that's assuming you can get it to do so in a decent resolution... those of us with older devices would be limited to the screen resolution of the device, unless they specifically revised AirVideo to detect when it was being fed via AirPlay and up the quality if the connection supported it...
 
wow...people are getting WAY ahead of themselves here. Apple has ONLY shown being able to play iTunes bought material through airplay. Considering that they STILL only allow iTunes material to be streamed to ATV (v1), I think everyone is going to be GREATLY disappointed when they learn that AirPlay only works with Apple iTunes video.

There is absolutely NO evidence to believe otherwise at this point...

No evidence except the beta of iOS 4.2 allowing it for any app using the standard video player in iOS. The only question remains is if this feature will be crippled before iOS 4.2 general availability.
 
You theoretially should be able to watch Hulu Plus so long as it is encoded in H.264 (and doesn’t get blocked once the networks figure out what Apple has done here).

I assure you they have figured out what Apple has done here, and they will quickly figure out how to block it.
 
I use AirVideo to play my mkv's, does this mean, I will be able to stream my MKV's to the new ATV?

Well, AirVideo uses the standard video controller (right?). Based on this early testing, it certainly seems like it would work, too. Of course since it's likely the same video feed coming through the iOS device, it will be at that res, scaled up for your TV. Yay for the iPhone 4 having such a decent resolution (even though not HD, still better than DVD resolution).

I really really hope this standard functionality sticks in 4.2 final and doesn't get watered back down.
 
Of course it was intentional.

Completely agree with you. The technology that enables it required too much effort to not be intentional.

The major issue, however, is that I see this being blocked by the time it is released because of licensing issues.
 
Streaming video as source?

I have doubts about that. Pulling video from the Internet over wifi which mostly works fine, then streaming that back over the same interface to the TV? Perhaps I am not fully understanding what is going on but that sounds like a bad idea.
 
I am waiting for googletv to stream content from the android tablet man.

I was going to answer this with "Don't hold your breath", but thought better of it. Instead, I'll say that Google may very well do this. The tricky questions are, how quick can Google bring its solution to market, and can they beat Apple to the punch?
 
That's what I am wondering..

I bet a lot of people are wondering just like us. Very exciting news if it does.

If the upcoming VLC app and RMXO's treasured AirVideo gets Airplay support...

...game, set, match.

Indeed!

Well, AirVideo uses the standard video controller (right?). Based on this early testing, it certainly seems like it would work, too. Of course since it's likely the same video feed coming through the iOS device, it will be at that res, scaled up for your TV. Yay for the iPhone 4 having such a decent resolution (even though not HD, still better than DVD resolution).

I really really hope this standard functionality sticks in 4.2 final and doesn't get watered back down.

When ATV was first announced, my buddy and I were discussing about getting it but we changed our minds later because we are too lazy to convert our MKV's collection into MP4's or M4V's. If this is true, we won't have to reconvert any of our movies anymore.

I can't wait to hear more about this. I will defiantly get the new ATV if this is true.
 
I assure you they have figured out what Apple has done here, and they will quickly figure out how to block it.

That was my thought too. I hope this doesn't jeopardize Apple's advances with the adoption of H264. All the networks would have to do to block this is switch back to streaming Flash content.
 
I'm sure I'm not the only one who saw this coming. When Steve Jobs announced the new Apple TV and decided to cap his introduction of it with AirPlay the first question in my mind and sent to Mr. Jobs via email was "will 3rd-party apps be able to stream video via AirPlay". He never responded, but I saw the vague response he sent to another user about the Videos app.

Clearly he knows the potential for AirPlay to change the game. It falls within the current license/contract terms he has in place with TV studios because the device playing the video is still the iPhone or iPad or iPod, but the external monitor is the television (kinda like you can do with the Apple A/V component or composite cables -- but without the cables).

Being able to initiate AirPlay from a mobile device and send audio or video to another device will have huge implications -- the potential is huge (from car stereos to television to other mobile devices).

I'm actually a bit surprised that AirPlay was announced a full 2 months before it will be available, but I suppose you need to get the 3rd-Party manufacturers time to get their accessories ready for Christmas and developers need time to test.

The next big move will be when your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch can be an AirPlay receiver. That is the predecessor to cloud-based iTunes.
 
Net Neutrality, anyone?

Assuming this is as reported, watch for Comcast to step up its attempts to sabotage net neutrality to a fever pitch. (And AT&T, and so forth.)

-fred
 
Using the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch as a remote (WiiMote) I can TOTALLY see this as Apple's step into the Video Game console!!

This would totally kick other consoles in the butt allowing you to essentially play any games you have anywhere on the go and at home.

Not that I am not just as excited about everyone else (who is excited as well of course) but remember, this was originally discussed around here about 3.5 years ago.

Let's all just keep our fingers crossed that indeed, the game on iOS device to AppleTV transfer truly happens.
 
I was wondering in another thread what happened to CBS' announcement of an app similar to ABC Player. I guess this is what happened. At least I hope so.
 
Airplay is great for those future streaming services that we may not know about right now.

Like the very recent DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket streaming service.

A brand new app like "Sunday Ticket" that comes out on Friday, could be pumping NFL games to your big screen on Sunday.
 
I was wondering in another thread what happened to CBS' announcement of an app similar to ABC Player. I guess this is what happened. At least I hope so.

I think that they announced that their website was going to be iPad/iOS compatible, not that they were going to make an iPad app.
 
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