Apple's Air Play

AirPlay is the wireless technology designed by apple for wirelessly streaming video , audio and photo from your iOS devices ipod, ipad, iphone, mac to your best home theatre system in the house. This technology enables user to effortlessly stream data from one apple device to another. Few hi-fi network player comes with airplay support namely 'Denon' and 'Marantz'. So, you can connect your apple device to these players using wi-fi to play a high quality sound.

Now we learnt airplay is a wireless technology for streaming multimedia data. Then how is it different from bluetooth. It just doesn't stop streaming only video and audio data. It also transmit song audio title, artist info and time elapsed etc. in addition to original media file. Airplay does do few compression on big-size media formats like WAV format and MP3 files will be streamed without any compression. Because it works using wi-fi all the airplay supported devices has to be connected to same wi-fi network for streaming media files.

Now how to stream video/photo/audio from your iOS device on your HDTV ?

All you need is a 2nd generation Apple-TV (with airplay receivers built in). Connect your HDTV with apple-tv using HDMI cable. Make sure apple-tv is connected to same wi-fi network as your iOS device. Now in your iOS device open the media file and click on the airplay icon. Apple-tv will be listed in airplay menu. Once you select apple-tv, your video will be streamed directly to HDTV and you can control the media using your ipod/ipad device in hand.

You can stream audio directly to speakers if it has airplay receiver built-in or to airport express connected speakers. Streaming is possible between any two airplay enabled devices. Thanks to apple for designing such a useful technology.

If your device doesn't show airplay icon. Make sure you have installed the latest software updates from apple.