One of my favorite features of the latest operating system for the iPhone is new wireless capabilities. For a while now, you could stream music over Bluetooth, and in my recent review of the Kensington AssistOne I mentioned how nice it is to start up my car and have the music from my iPhone start playing through my car’s speakers. With iOS 4.2 on the iPhone, it is now easy to stream music and video from an iPhone to external speakers. Here is how I have been using — and really enjoying — the new AirPlay feature.
Wireless Audio
In my house, I have broadband cable internet in my study. My cable modem is connected to a Wi-Fi router so that I have Wi-Fi in my house. The router that I use is the Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (Simultaneous Dual-Band). Apple’s wireless routers are a little more expensive than the ones sold by other companies, but in my experience they work very well (especially with other Apple products, and I have all Macs in my home) so it is worth spending a few extra dollars. Because my study is located at one end of my house, the Wi-Fi signal doesn’t quite reach my entire house. Thus, I also have two Apple Airport Express devices which extend the Wi-Fi network; one is upstairs in my bedroom, and one is downstairs in my family room.
It just so happens that both of those Airport Express devices are located next to audio devices. Downstairs in my family room, the outlet where my Airport Express is plugged in also provides power to my Bose SoundDock Portable, a speaker system that is primarily designed to have an iPod (or iPhone) plugged in to the dock connector on the front of the device. The problem with that configuration is that if my iPhone is sitting in the Bose SoundDock, I can’t use the iPhone. So if I want to sit in my living room and go through e-mails or browse websites, I cannot also listen to music from my iPhone on the Bose at the same time. To get around this, I have an old iPod that serves no purpose except to work with the Bose SoundDock so that I can play music from that iPod, but I rarely sync that iPod so it rarely has the latest songs that I have purchased and it never has the latest podcasts that I have downloaded.
All of this has changed with the new AirPlay feature of the iPhone. The Bose SoundDock has an auxiliary input in the back, so I can just run a cord from the aux port on the Airport Express to the aux port on the Bose, and suddenly my Bose has become a wireless speaker. I can select whatever music or podcast that I want to hear on the iPhone, press the button that has a rectangle with a triangle at the bottom, select where I want to send the music, and then the music or podcast on my iPhone is streamed to the Bose.
This works in my bedroom as well. I recently purchased an iHome iA5 alarm clock that works with an iPhone, and it sits on my nightstand. (I’ll post a review after I have had more time to use that product.) Like the Bose SoundDock, that iHome iA5 has a dock where you place an iPhone so that it is charged and so that the iPhone audio can play through the speaker, but the device also has an aux jack in the back. I ran a cord from the Airport Express in my bedroom to the back of the iHome iA5, and now I can just press a button to make the audio on my iPhone play through the iHome iA5, even if I am walking around with the iPhone.
While I usually use AirPlay to play something from the iPod app on my iPhone like a song or a podcast, you can also stream audio when you are watching video. For example, if I am in my family room watching a YouTube video or some other movie on my iPhone or my iPad, I can send the audio to my Bose SoundDock. That way, I can watch the video on the iPhone or iPad, but have the audio play through the much better sounding speakers on the Bose. Very cool.
Wireless Video
AirPlay also allows you to stream video from an iPhone to an Apple TV if you have the new Second Generation Apple TV. I have one, but I’ve been having some issues with it because of my television (which I will discuss in a future post once I work through the problems some more UPDATE 12/6/10 see this post). But if you have a new Apple TV that is working fine for you, you can use the same AirPlay button to send the video from your iPhone to your TV.
I find it really neat that you can do this, but right now I see limited utility. Most videos that I am going to want to send from my iPhone to my TV — such as a home movie or a TV show or movie that I purchased on iTunes — already exists on my computer. An Apple TV can already stream from a computer (as long as it is turned on), so why do I need to stream from my iPhone? You can also send a YouTube video on your iPhone to an Apple TV, but the Apple TV has the built-in ability to play YouTube videos so again, I don’t see the need.
Right now, the main value that I see involves sharing video with others. If a friend with an iPhone or iPad comes to my house, and he has a video that he wants to show me, with AirPlay he can now show it on my Apple TV even though I don’t have a copy of the video on my computer.
In the future, when Apple allows third parties to add AirPlay capabilities to their apps, I see AirPlay becoming much more useful. I can envision an app that generates pictures or videos on the iPhone and then streams the pictures or video to your Apple TV. This is media that would not already exist on your computer, so there is a need to stream directly from the iPhone. There are rumors that Steve Jobs has said that this function is coming in 2011.
So in sum, I already love using AirPlay to stream audio. It works like magic; just press that one button and the sound from my tiny iPhone speaker instead starts playing through a larger, nicer speaker across the room. Right now, streaming video has limited utility for me, but I can see this feature becoming much more useful in 2011. AirPlay is definitely one of my favorite new features in iOS 4.2.
Thanks for reviewing the AirPlay feature (and that my BOSE system has a doc behind it, you’d think I’d look for those things), but in my looking at the current configuration I have, I’m a bit put off that Apple has developed yet another protocol that is proprietary and won’t work over standard WiFi. I come from the PC world, though I’ve been living in the Mac world for the past year or so, and I’m constantly amazed that Apple’s products only work with Apple or to get the best bang for the buck, you need to have everything Apple.
In my system I also have a 1TB TimeCapsule, this serves mainly as my print server (since an off-the-shelf print server wouldn’t work with my Mac) and it also works as a network drive, I store videos, pictures, music,etc… up there. I was very surprised that this didn’t also get updated to work with AirPlay, instead if I want to stream movies, music, etc… from my network drive I need to have a machine up and running to do so (At least that’s what I gather, this bothers me as it’s a waste of electricity, it ain’t easy being green you know).
I’d love to hear if you have any ideas of how to make an existing system work without having to purchase a new Apple router and have my TimeCapsule work without having to purchase a new Mac/PC to put on my network to stream the videos (I don’t think AppleTV will do this will it?).