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What the difference between Home Sharing Vs. Airplay.

T

techguy40

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 1, 2008
204
0
Why is there Airplay for the Mac on Itunes?

We already have homesharing for Itunes to ATV2 that does the same thing. It streams your itunes library for movies, music and photos.

Airplay for the Mac to ATV2 don't make any sense.

Also what the big deal streaming you tube videos from ios device. ATV2 has You Tube already.
 
I was gonna start a thread, but this place looks good. I am finally starting to understand what Airplay is. Does it exist on the Mac? I would get an AppleTV if it did. And am I to understand that you can click a button on any compatible video and it will stream to your Apple TV? Or is it only with iTunes content?
 
swingerofbirch said:
I was gonna start a thread, but this place looks good. I am finally starting to understand what Airplay is. Does it exist on the Mac? I would get an AppleTV if it did. And am I to understand that you can click a button on any compatible video and it will stream to your Apple TV? Or is it only with iTunes content?
Click to expand...

It exist on the Mac for Itunes content only.

But Homesharing on Itunes on the mac does the same thing already. No need for Airplay on the Mac.

Airplay should of been for the IOS devices only.
 
techguy40 said:
It exist on the Mac for Itunes content only.

But Homesharing on Itunes on the mac does the same thing already. No need for Airplay on the Mac.

Airplay should of been for the IOS devices only.
Click to expand...

I see...yes I don't have anything in iTunes I want on my TV. I already have an Airport Express for my iTunes music. I thought Airplay would be really cool if you could push random web videos onto your TV with it. Maybe some day . . .
 
AirPlay = Push media, no iTunes Store account name and password required. Awesome for getting media from visitor's machines and devices onto your telly without giving them access to your iTunes account.

Home Sharing = Pull media, easy one-step access to your media.

They each have their positives but the ability to push media from ANY computer running iTunes or any iOS 4 device is awesome.
 
Airplay will stream content in iTunes from your Mac or PC to your Apple TV or Airport Express. You can go to your Mac and start playing something in iTunes, select the little Airplay icon and push it to your Apple TV or Airport Express. You can also use the Remote app on your iOS device to select the content in iTunes on your Mac and play it on your Apple TV or Airport Express. Note that if you have Home Sharing set up on your Apple TV you can do the same thing except you start at the Apple TV and pull the content from the Mac rather than start at the Mac and push it to Apple TV. Of course with Airplay, you don't need to have Home Sharing set up.

But the Mac/Apple TV integration is just one part of Airplay. The other part of Airplay is that it allows you to push content actually stored on an iOS device to your Apple TV or Airport Express. In this scenario, your Mac and iTunes are not needed at all and don't have to be on. All you need is your iOS device. To me this is the most revolutionary part of Airplay. I don't think it has ever been possible to have a mobile device in your hand with GB of content on it that you can make play on your TV and/or home theater wirelessly like this. All in HD and 5.1 surround sound. That is pretty cool. And streaming radio/music apps like Pandora are absolutely killer with Airplay used in this way.

When I visit the family for the Holidays, I'll be taking my Apple TV 2G and loading up a few Hollywood movies and home videos on my iPhone. When we get there, I should just be able to connect the Apple TV and Airplay the movies, home videos and photos, holiday music, and etc. on the big screen with no computer required.
 
The biggest difference between using home sharing and airplay is multiple devices.

When using home sharing, your apple TV pulls content from your Mac and plays it on that device.

Using Airplay you can push (music only I think) to multiple Apple TV's or Airport Expresses.

For me that's a massive difference.
 
newagemac said:
When we get there, I should just be able to connect the Apple TV and Airplay the movies, home videos and photos, holiday music, and etc. on the big screen with no computer required.
Click to expand...

Better make sure you import your home movies into iTunes (computer required) and then copy them onto your iPhone before you leave, then. If you should happen to make any spontaneous home movies during your stay, and edit them in iMovie on your phone (no computer required) then they aren't going anywhere near your AppleTV until you import them into iTunes (computer required) and sync to your phone.

Just saying.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

There are a lot of use case senarios which airplay would be beneficial, and a handful which it may be superfluous.

In my case I use both. If I want to stream to the ATV2 I use homesharing, but if I want to stream to the dinning room or spare room, I use airplay via airport expresses. The setup gives me the flexibility to stream different media from the same source, my iTunes library. Maybe have Dave Brubeck playing on the ATV2 and Metric in the dinning room.
 
Does airplay need a wifi network? Could I take my apple tv and ipad to a place without a wireless router and still be able to airplay stuff from my ipad to the Atv?
 
HI! I was going to start a thread but this one is close enough. I have a Macbook pro mid 2009 with the latest version of Mountain Lion, I have an iPad 2 and an ATV3. My bf has a late 2011 mbpro. I bought the ATV3 last week knowing that I needed min 2011 mb to be able to use Airplay. Unfortunately, the Airplay doesn't show up on the top right toolbar when it's on. Airplay comes up on itunes on both computers and all iOS devices but not the on the late 2011 mbpro. The reason I want to be able to do this is so that I can stream whatever I'm watching on the mbpro to the TV without cables. I read on this thread that I might be able to "pull" data from any device is i have home sharing on but I have no idea how to do this. I am not able to go on a website on my mbpro and see it on my tv via home sharing. Help! The only reason I got the ATV3 in the first place was to make my life simpler (and lazier) :p
 
slushbee said:
HI! I was going to start a thread but this one is close enough. I have a Macbook pro mid 2009 with the latest version of Mountain Lion, I have an iPad 2 and an ATV3. My bf has a late 2011 mbpro. I bought the ATV3 last week knowing that I needed min 2011 mb to be able to use Airplay. Unfortunately, the Airplay doesn't show up on the top right toolbar when it's on. Airplay comes up on itunes on both computers and all iOS devices but not the on the late 2011 mbpro. The reason I want to be able to do this is so that I can stream whatever I'm watching on the mbpro to the TV without cables. I read on this thread that I might be able to "pull" data from any device is i have home sharing on but I have no idea how to do this. I am not able to go on a website on my mbpro and see it on my tv via home sharing. Help! The only reason I got the ATV3 in the first place was to make my life simpler (and lazier) :p
Click to expand...

Just to make sure, the 2011 MacBook is running Mountain Lion, correct?
 
WesCole said:
Cool. Try going to System Preferences -> Displays -> and make sure "Show mirroring options in the menu bar when available" is checked.
Click to expand...

Oddly that's not an option... I've seen screen caps of what you're describing but it's just not there. Here are my screen caps.
 

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slushbee said:
Oddly that's not an option... I've seen screen caps of what you're describing but it's just not there. Here are my screen caps.
Click to expand...

Well, that is strange. I am not sure why it is not showing if it is capable of doing airplay mirroring.
 
What if

tallyho said:
Better make sure you import your home movies into iTunes (computer required) and then copy them onto your iPhone before you leave, then. If you should happen to make any spontaneous home movies during your stay, and edit them in iMovie on your phone (no computer required) then they aren't going anywhere near your AppleTV until you import them into iTunes (computer required) and sync to your phone.

Just saying.
Click to expand...

If you make home movies, why not turn mirroring on then when you play your movie it will go to the ATV without using iTunes, no?
 
Naboh said:
If you make home movies, why not turn mirroring on then when you play your movie it will go to the ATV without using iTunes, no?
Click to expand...

No, because at the time of the post you are quoting was created (2 years ago) mirroring didn't exist. Now - yes.
 
swingerofbirch said:
I see...yes I don't have anything in iTunes I want on my TV. I already have an Airport Express for my iTunes music. I thought Airplay would be really cool if you could push random web videos onto your TV with it. Maybe some day . . .
Click to expand...

I use Mirroring on my new iMac to watch regular Hulu videos on my ATV.

As an example.
 
Let me get this straight about the differences between Home Sharing and AirPlay

Home Sharing - ATV2 and computer on the same network, it streams from iTunes.

AirPlay - You can use an iOS device and stream from it.
 
dinggus said:
Let me get this straight about the differences between Home Sharing and AirPlay

Home Sharing - ATV2 and computer on the same network, it streams from iTunes.

AirPlay - You can use an iOS device and stream from it.
Click to expand...

With AirPlay mirroring, you can also stream everything from a Mac that meets certain requirements. So if you have a new MacBook and :apple:TV, you can watch stuff on your big TV that the providers don't want to let you see unless you're at a much smaller computer or pay for something like Hulu Plus. So if you don't own something like an Xbox with ESPN3 but you have a MacBook, with AirPlay you just brought all that stuff to your TV. Same with the free Hulu from the website and tons of YouTube and other video options.

Home Sharing quite simply is iTunes on your TV. The reason a lot of us bought :apple:TV devices.
 
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