I stream movies from my MacBookPro to my Apple TV. After I set up my HomePod today, I couldn't get sound on the HomePod. After speaking with Apple customer support, I found out the way to do it - not exactly easy.
- Bring up movie on Mac
- Airplay (using airplay icon) to ATV
- Using Sound icon on menu, use output HomePod
Doing step 3 before 2 doesn't work.
It seems to me that if you Airplay from the Mac to the ATV, if the ATV output is set to HomePod, it should just go there. Step 3 shouldn't be necessary.
I'm sure they'll fix this is further iterations of iOS. Right?
I doubt Apple would see this as a problem to fix. HP is a kind of island product, not necessarily solely meant to be a speaker for
TV. For example, you "throw" (Airplay) your movie to
TV. Should that automatically mean you want the sound of the movie playing on the HP? What if you are wanting to watch some video without sound while music plays on your HP? What if you want to use the "smarts" side of HP while watching something on
TV? Etc.
Who would want video playing on a screen without sound? Go into any investing-oriented office and you'll probably find screens of CNBC and FoxBusiness running with audio on mute... and maybe even music lightly playing on the "whole"-office speaker system. Just went to the dentist a few days ago. There in the office was a TV showing scenes of tropical destinations with the audio on mute... and music- local radio- playing from the speaker in the ceiling. More specifically, run a photo slideshow on your
TV while asking your HP to play some music playlist. Etc.
As is, HP is a potential destination of audio. Via Airplay, the owner explicitly says it should be used in some way (here, as a speaker for your
TV right now). But it is actually designed to be used a whole bunch of other ways, with the
TV airplay option being only one of many. Based upon Apple marketing copy, it's primary purpose is a room filling music speaker fed primarily by a subscription to AM.
Now, that wouldn't necessarily stop Apple from building some kind of optional controls where one could- say- heavily marry an HP near exclusively to be THE speaker output for an
TV. But instead, that's just one of many optional uses of the speaker via Airplay. For example, it could also be the exclusive music player of Spotify, Pandora, Tidal, etc locked- via Airplay- to an iDevice to play those sources in the very same way. Does Apple see it as a problem that- via Airplay- HP doesn't automatically become a playback speaker for competing music sources? Probably not.
So I suspect Apple sees the 1-2-3 steps as being the optimal way for HP to be used as you wish to use it... basically you overriding it's principal (intended) use to instead use it specifically as a speaker for
TV on demand. HP is really NOT intended to be a home theater speaker... but it can ALSO be used like that via the flexility of Airplaying anything to it- it just takes a few steps to set it up for that.
If Apple listens and if enough people clearly communicate to Apple that what they really want is an Apple-branded home theater system of speaker(s), that would be the product likely to be married up with
TV. As is, HP is more of an unmarried bachelor/bacheorette in a long-distance-but-not-exclusive relationship with iCloud/AM.
