Features like Handoff demonstrate just how useful it is to be able to chop and change tasks between different Apple devices, perhaps starting an email on your iPad and continuing it on your Mac.
A similar thing may soon be possible with your Apple TV, as a patent published today shows how Apple has invented a way of carrying out a sort-of reverse AirPlay: sending content from your Apple TV to your iOS device, rather than the other way around.
The big advantage of the concept is that it would allow remote viewing of Apple TV, whether this means having a TV show follow you from room-to-room, or tuning into your Apple TV while you’re away from home.
Another intriguing scenario the patent paints is about a group of friends sitting around watching a movie on Apple TV. “During the viewing when someone decides to leave the room (e.g., to prepare a snack), the other viewers must [currently] either pause the viewing while they all wait for the departed viewer to return, or let the presentation continue and the returning viewer may miss some of the presentation,” the patent notes.
Were this technology to be implemented, however, the main group could continue watching uninterrupted, while the snack-maker in question could continue their viewing using their iPhone or iPad.
Of course, being a patent only, there is a chance Apple’s invention will never make it into an actual product. Seeing as how we’re expecting a major Apple TV revamp in the near future, though, this would seem just the kind of neat function that would help set Apple apart.
Source: USPTO
Via: Apple Insider
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
3 responses to “How Apple TV might Handoff media to your iPad”
What advantage would you have in tuning into programs via an Apple TV, over an iPad? Are there shows that are available for the set-top box but aren’t available for the iPad?
Actually, I was recently looking into this sort of tech/hack so that I could link my wireless head phones up for both my playstation and aTV. The best answer I could come up with, would have been to download an app that I can’t remember the name of(all in the jailbreak world btw) which could airplay the sound and/or video from the aTV to my iphone. From there I would pair my headphones up to the iphone since the aTV does not have blutooth. So I wouldn’t really want to play netflix video on my phone from the aTV but I would like to get my aTV to play the sound to my iphone so that I could use my headphones.
OR
apple could just revamp the aTV already to include bluetooth so that I could pair my wireless headphones.
Basically, this is not valueless tech but it is definitely useful for a very limited and specific scope
The AppleTV does have Bluetooth, both the 2nd and 3rd generation. It just doesn’t support AD2P. Also, Bluetooth headphones can’t connect to 2 devices at the same time. It just isn’t possible, no matter how expensive the headphones are.