Google today announced a new Apple AirPlay competitor called Google Cast, which lets you stream audio from a whole bunch of popular apps to Cast-compatible speakers. The search giant has teamed up with a number of popular services for its launch, including Pandora, Rdio, and NPR One.
I’m a huge fan of Popcorn Time, the Mac App that lets you stream torrents to your Mac and even (if you’re a Windows user) to your Apple TV.
The one thing Popcorn Time doesn’t have is an iPhone or iPad app. But that’s all about to change, and Popcorn Time for iOS could land within the next couple of days.
Popcorn Time is a fantastic — albeit questionably legal — Mac app that allows you to treat BitTorrent like Netflix, searching for movies and TV shows on sites like The Pirate Bay that you want to watch and then streaming them directly to your computer.
It’s a great app, but it has at least one glaring problem: You can’t stream a movie over Popcorn Time directly to your Apple TV using AirPlay. Luckily, thanks to a new Mac app, you can.
Apple has made yet more improvements to AirPlay in iOS 8 by enabling compatible devices to make direct connections with each other for content streaming. This eliminates AirPlay’s reliance on a Wi-Fi network and fixes one of its biggest limitations.
The last Apple TV concept we saw had us swooning for a redesigned Apple remote/gaming pad, but if Apple decides to reduce the Apple TV’s size to take on the Chromecast and the new Roku stick, this Apple TV Air concept from Curved might be spot on.
Rather than running an HDMI cable to Apple’s little black box, the Apple TV Air concept would plug directly into your HDMI port, allowing you to instantly beam video from your iPhone to your big screen TV over AirPlay.
Take a look:
This Cult of Mac Deals promotion is going to do its part to bring your speakers back to life.
The Griffin Twenty is a system that takes your existing speakers and allows you to do something new with them. You don’t need an iPhone speaker dock, or Bluetooth speakers, or cables. Connect your favorite speakers to Twenty, and it acts as your stereo receiver for pure digital sound. And right now you can get The Griffin Twenty for 30% off – just $69.99.
Aether’s Cone speaker is simple, in both its physical design and its interface. Inside, though, it has a brain that learns what you like.
The Cone is a cone-shaped AirPlay-ready speaker which also streams music straight from the internet. It learns your tastes, and even lets you cue up tracks by asking for them, just like Siri.
More than two million videos from the web are being saved to Pocket each week now. To make the viewing experience more seamless, Pocket has integrated AirPlay into its iOS app for sharing with the Apple TV. The update went live today in the App Store.
Thanks to the slickness of AirPlay, users can exit the Pocket app when a video is streaming. There’s a new AirPlay button embedded in the app’s video player.
“This is just the beginning of how Pocket plans on truly becoming the DVR for the Web, and we think it’s going to be a great addition to our users’ experience in general,” said Pocket.
Source: App Store
DoubleTwist, the company that has long been helping Android-powered devices work harmoniously with iTunes, today released a new Android app that lets users rip songs from iTunes Radio. Called AirPlay Recorder, the app essentially turns your Android device into an AirPlay receiver, then records all the audio that you play through it.
But is it legal?
The FAVI pico+ projector is just another little battery-powered “beamer,” a DLP projector that can be kept in a pocket and used to throw photos and video from your iPhone or iPad up onto the wall. But this one has a neat extra – the built-in Wi-Fi radio ands AirPlay support, so the only cable you’ll need is the charger to keep the thing going.
I recently scored an awesome second-hand sofa for my office, which means that I can sit back behind my 27-inch iMac and watch TV and movies on the big screen. But I’m used to watching everything on my iPad, I’ve been using AirServer to turn my iMac into an AirPlay screen. It works flawlessly, and this alone would be worth the $15 price.
But now a new update adds screen recording, plus support for using your keyboard’s media keys to control playback from the iDevice
If you’ve been hunting for a flawless solution to mirror your gameplay, videos, photos, presentations, and so much more right to your Mac then the application Cult of Mac Deals is currently offering will bring value to your life.
With X-Mirage you can wirelessly mirror your iOS device’s display to your Mac to take advantage of the big screen, and record everything onscreen with one click. This is a simple solution for showing off your iOS devices on a bigger screen. And the price is one that simply can’t beat – just $8.99 for a limited time.
If you love the Amazon Video app on your iPhone or iPad all the more now that it can stream AirPlay video to your Apple TV, great news: a new update to the app has just made AirPlay even better.
Netflix 5 brings HD video and AirPlay to iPads running iOS 7. You may have thought you had HD video streaming to your retina iPad, but you didn’t. 5 fixes that, and it also lets you throw your TV shows and movies up onto your big screen via Apple TV with native AirPlay streaming.
The Netflix app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch has been updated to bring high-definition video streaming to devices running iOS 7. The release also adds support for AirPlay, and some improvements and optimizations that make the app more stable under Apple’s latest software.
With the exception of latency, AirPlay beats out Bluetooth audio streaming any day. Fewer dropouts, way better (lossless) quality and less power drain on your iDevice, as it works over the Wi-Fi connection you already have on anyway.
Usually, though, AirPlay speakers are expensive. The Auris Skye is designed to fix that, turning any dock connector into an AirPlay receiver.
Amazon has added AirPlay support to its popular video streaming app – Amazon Instant Video. Starting today, the new feature allows iOS users to push video from their iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad to the Apple TV. Not quite as good as having an Amazon Instant Video channel on the Apple TV, but the move is sure to satisfy Amazon Prime users for the time being.
The update also includes more IMDB integration with cast info, ratings, trivia and quotes. Amazon also says the updated app is faster, more responsive and now supports concurrent downloads. There’s also a new “Customers who watched this also watched…” feature to help users discover more movies and spend more time and money on Amazon. The free update is available now in the App Store.
Source: iTunes
Thanks: Charles!
The Wren V5AP is just about the best-looking speaker I’ve tested, with a tastefully contemporary case finished with bamboo and silvered cloth.
It’s also one of the best sounding, and although it might not be as convenient as some other AirPlay speakers, it makes up for it in other ways.
Spotify announced today that it is launching a new way to streaming music to connected speakers around the house with its new “Spotify Connect” feature that is coming to a line-up of Spotify-supported speakers.
The new AirPlay-like feature allows you to walk into your house and seamlessly switch from listening to your playlist on your iPhone to playing music on your living room speakers. You current listening session is synced up to the cloud so you can switch faster without stopping the flow of music.
Unlike AirPlay though, Spotify Connect will cost you some money as the feature will only be available soon to Premium subscribers. Third-party OEMs are expect to roll out Connect supported speakers later this year.
Here’s a promo video on how Connect works:
Infuse is my favorite third-party media player for the iPhone and iPad. And until VLC for iOS returned to the App Store, there was really no competition. FireCore, the maker of Infuse, isn’t letting other apps get the last word. In today’s big update, Infuse has received a number of great features, including support for AirPlay and file transfers over Wi-Fi.
One of my most-used Mac apps is Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil, a utility which hijacks the audio from any app you like and pipes it to your AirPlay speakers. It synced audio and video over AirPlay before Apple added the feature (back when it was called AirTunes), and is a great way to send the same music to every one of the stack of wireless speakers I’m testing at any one time (it’s like a bad disco in here).
Now, there is Airfoil Remote, which lets you control Airfoil for Mac from your iPhone.
The best thing about AirPlay is that it just works. It takes about two taps to send audio from an iPhone to an Apple TV or other supported device. The downside to AirPlay is that Apple owns it exclusively, and accessory makers have to pay a licensing fee to use it in their products. That means customers pay more for an average AirPlay-capable speaker vs. a Bluetooth box.
DoubleTwist, a small developer team behind some gorgeous Mac and Android apps, has an open source alternative to AirPlay called MagicPlay.
It’s our own fault. We all asked Apple to dramatically change the look and feel of the iOS operating system, which, until yesterday, remained largely unchanged since the introduction of the original iPhone back in 2007. And we all complained when it didn’t do that with iOS 6 this time last year.
But I can’t help but feel the Cupertino company is now punishing us for all those requests, and all that complaining we did before about its skeuomorphic designs.
When it comes to design, iOS 7 is vastly different to its predecessors. It still functions in much the same way — though there are some new features you’ll need to get used to — but it looks completely different. As soon as you power it up for the first time the minimalistic feel is staring back at you, but it isn’t until you’ve completed the setup process and arrived at your home screen that you want to vomit in your own lap.
After testing AirPlay speakers against Bluetooth speakers, one thing has jumped out at me: AirPlay is way, way better. In terms of sound at least. Which is why I’m interested in the Wren v5 wireless speaker, an AirPlay speaker from an ex-president at Harman International.
The official SoundCloud apps for Android and iOS have today been updated to add support for Google+ Sign-In, allowing you to use your Google+ account in place of Facebook or Twitter. What’s more, there’s also support for Google+ sharing.