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iOS 5 Beta 3 Adds AirPlay Support for FaceTime

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Apr 12, 2001
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facetime_over_airplay.jpg



As noted by TiPb, the third beta of iOS 5 released earlier this week has activated new AirPlay streaming support for FaceTime video calling. The feature allows users to display FaceTime video calls directly on a large-screen TV for easy viewing by larger groups of people.
If this makes it into the final release -- and not everything does -- it'll be fantastic for families and businesses alike.

The ability to easily start a video call and beam it onto the big screen is compelling. Whether it's grandpa and grandma, or the team in England, it takes FaceTime from a small, personal experience to a big, group experience at the touch of a button.
Click to expand...
With the FaceTime camera of course remaining on the iOS device itself, users taking advantage of the new AirPlay feature while participating in a FaceTime video call will need to ensure that they are looking in the proper direction, but it certainly appears that FaceTime over AirPlay does add some utility for video calling in group settings.

Article Link: iOS 5 Beta 3 Adds AirPlay Support for FaceTime
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/13/ios-5-beta-3-adds-airplay-support-for-facetime/
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Man, Apple is making it hard for me to not want to upgrade my 1st gen ATV.

The main thing holding me back is ATV2 not being able to act as an airplay source.

I typically play music over my ATV and stream it to a connected AP Express.
 
An AppleTV is easily worth $99 just for AirPlay. But the thing that bugs me about viewing the iPad screen on a TV through AirPlay or Cable is that the resolution remains the same and you get those black pillars.

Yes, I know you can't just stretch out the UI just because it's on a big widescreen tv. But for thing like FaceTime or viewing fullscreen Hulu/Web Video then there should be a way for it to be optimized to wide.
 
urkel said:
An AppleTV is easily worth $99 just for AirPlay. But the thing that bugs me about viewing the iPad screen on a TV through AirPlay or Cable is that the resolution remains the same and you get those black pillars.

Yes, I know you can't just stretch out the UI just because it's on a big widescreen tv. But for thing like FaceTime or viewing fullscreen Hulu/Web Video then there should be a way for it to be optimized to wide.
Click to expand...

Applications that are "secondary monitor aware" like Netflix will show the video properly. The TV acts as a secondary monitor and will run at full resolution. When mirroring you have to go with the least common denominator, which is going to be the iPad screen itself.
 
This sounds awesome.

But what does it do to battery life? We're now streaming three different videos at once:

1.) An incoming video to the iPad.
2.) An outgoing video from the iPad.
3.) The videos to the Apple TV.

Does this work on the iPhone too, or is it iPad only?
 
At some point I’m going to think, $39 for an iPad video cable, or just 2.5x that and go for AppleTV instead. AppleTV will win! Plus, I plan to return to Netflix some time.

I’ll be hooking it to a projector, though, not a TV. Don’t own one, never will. A big iMac (or Mac Pro) meets my daily needs thanks to EyeTV, and for big-experience movies and games, there’s the projector.

I definitely wish for AirPlay Mac video mirroring too. I’d snap up an AppleTV instantly (well, maybe waiting for the rumored 1080p version) just for that.
 
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Tom Grant said:
Would really like to see AirPlay Mirroring for the Mac as well one day.
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Very much agreed. I would buy some as gifts for those that have no easy way of cabling to their TVs (and swapping cabling all the time is a pain), but would like to be able to.
 
...and we've now reached Back To The Future 2 style video calling. Very nice.

Now just give us some high quality forward facing cameras on our iOS devices to take advantage of this feature and we can all get fired by our bosses in big screen HD!...and then look extra sad when we call Grandma afterward to ask for help paying the bills;)
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Very cool. Goodbye skyping with the baby and my parents (baby's grandparents) hello FaceTime.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I love AirPlay. I use it all the time as it is. It seems like it's going to get a whole lot better with IOS5. Mirroring and FaceTime on the TV sound like great useful features.
 
jmann said:
WOW, THAT IS SUCH A GREAT IDEA!


That's all I have to say.
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I love when Apple does EXACTLY what I said they should haha :D

When people were saying Apple will make an actual TV a year or more ago and that it will have a camera in the TV I said that is stupid because the camera is fixed and you can't walk around or anything without going out of frame. I said what they should do is stream from the camera in your iDevice and then you have a mobile camera you can aim anywhere you want! :cool:

Tom Grant said:
Would really like to see AirPlay Mirroring for the Mac as well one day.
Click to expand...

Yup. It needs to work back and forth between ALL Apple hardware!

AirPlay is the trojan surprise! People keep demanding apps on the Apple TV and content from studios that block devices etc. AirPlay with mirroring essentially gives us EVERY app in the App Store instantly right on the Apple TV plus content that won't be blocked from the big screen anymore! LOVE IT!!! :eek:
 
Now make a dock to hold your iPad on top of the TV, with the good backside video camera pointing out, and allow FaceTime to use full HD resolution.
 
Now if the Apple TV 2/3 would support Face Time natively, maybe by plugging a webcam/mic into the USB port and the TV for sound and picture via the HMDI) it would be cool.

But somehow needing to look into the iPad/iphone camera and talk to its mic while also watching the TV?

I doubt the iPhone's mic is sensitive to be able to just somehow sit the phone on top of the TV as the web cam and sitting back a sevreal feet on the sofa.
 
As wackymacky mentioned,

How do you look into the camera while watching the other at the big screen? Whenever you don't look into the camera, it feels like you're talking to someone that is making making a phone-call with you but does not see you. (defeating the (personal aspect) purpose of Facetime)

On the other hand, using a webcam is often the same…

Still love all the TV Airplay features. Nasty that they aren't for sale over here…
 
This doesn't work on the iPhone4 or iPod Touch4G with iOS5 Beta 3 / ATV2G iOS5 Beta 3

Must be an iPad 2 only function
 
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