Since you'll be walking around the house a lot during the day, you decide to turn on an AirPlay-enabled stereo in your bedroom and your WiFi-connected Apple TV in your living room. Later, we'll look at some third-party manufacturers that have partnered with Apple to produce stereo equipment with AirPlay compatibility.Īs a basic example of how you might use AirPlay, suppose you have an iPhone and you launch iTunes on it to listen to your favorite tracks. Apple TV is the only receiver that can stream HD video and photos from your device in addition to audio. Some devices that could be sources also have the ability to be receivers.

You can also enable AirPlay from your computer by running iTunes 10.2 or later.Īlso as of this writing, devices that can be AirPlay receivers are, primarily, the Apple AirPort (a proprietary wireless hub for Apple products) and Apple TV. These devices must be running Apple iOS 4.2 or later, and any application you want to stream from must have the option to enable AirPlay streaming for that app. A single source can send its stream to multiple receivers.Īs of this writing, the list of devices that could be AirPlay sources includes the iPad, second generation or later iPod Touch, iPhone 3G and 4, and the second generation Apple TV. The receiver is an AirPlay-compatible device that can play that streaming media as well as display track information, such as the song title and artist name. The source is a device running AirPlay-enabled software, meaning that it can stream media (audio or video) using AirPlay. AirPlay has two active components: a source and a receiver.

AirPlay is a leap beyond just connecting stereo speakers to your iPad or iPhone.

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