Although Apple’s September 9th event looks like it will super charge the Apple TV into a PlayStation-killing video game console, it’s not the indisputable king-of-the-hill of streaming media boxes right now. Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast… all have their advantages over the Apple TV except for one killer feature: AirPlay Mirroring, which allows the Apple TV to stream anything running on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
Unless you have an Apple TV, you can’t use AirPlay Mirroring… right? Actually, you can, as long you have a Raspberry Pi.
If you haven’t heard of a Raspberry Pi before, it’s a dirt cheap ($35!) micro-controller custom designed to be something of a hacker’s playground. For just a hint of what you can do with a Raspberry Pi, check out Cult of Mac’s previous how-to, 5 hot Raspberry Pi projects for Mac geeks.
If you have a Raspberry Pi, it turns out it’s trivial to add AirPlay Mirror support to it. All you do is download and install some software called rPlay. Once it has been installed, you can mirror your iPhone, iPad, or Mac to any display with a Raspberry Pi hooked up to it.
Sure, Apple TVs are pretty cheap at $99, so if you want to get AirPlay Mirroring on your TV, it’s only a C-note away. But you know what’s cheaper than $99? $35. Consider this a way to dip your toe in the AirPlay water.
Source: Instructables
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
12 responses to “How to get YouTube back on your Apple TV (second gen)”
What in the heck does this have to with YouTube?
simply used as an example, poor choice yes but most got the gist of it, including myself.
Completely screwed up… Headline about one subject, article about something else…. terrible. Where’s the article that matches this headline?
The current (3rd) generation Apple TV hasn’t been $99 for quite some time now, and this article has nothing to do with the 2nd gen ATV nor YouTube.
“Sure, Apple TVs are pretty cheap at $99”
$99 would be for the most expensive Apple TV for sale today.
FYI, John, when they are new from Apple, they are $69!
correct and there isn’t a “most expensive” model, they’re all the same unless the 69.99 version doesn’t include the 20.00 remote which is 20.00 thus 89.99 for both plus tax but still not 99.00 and they all include a remote. They USED to be 99.99 yes, and I’m sticking with my 2nd gen (I think) which has the HD inside….handy for sure to fill up with movies a bit and take on road if you cant get internet (which is VERY rare you can’t. Seems a typo is his best excuse as of now.
I agree, but really wish they’d revamp the AppleTV and do a nice refresh of it and perhaps an actual AppleTV with screen and all, even a smaller one for say the office and open it up a bit to other formats such as .MKV, AVI (unless avi already plays) and a usb port that allows hooking up an external HD (again unless that’s already available, but so far it’s been a fairly closed eco-system. Just open it wide open for any codec and let us have the options and formats it’s currently not allowing. Needs to act more like a HTPC than a ROCK IMO.
Last I checked 2nd gens can’t play Youtube, hence the headline…..
They do AirPlay just fine.
wasn’t sure +1 Thought it didn’t come until 3rd gen but thanks man!!!
This is a stupid article that misrepresents the facts (price, capability, etc.). Between this and the crap LeFevre has been posting lately, I don’t see much reason to come back to CoM.
Adios!
AirPlay has been blocked by a lot of apps (such as xfinity) which defeats its purpose, making it impossible to watch it on tv.