Apple TV 2.0 Airtunes Support

[StefanM]

Hi,

somewhere in the Internet I read, that Apple TV 2.0 will support streaming music to Airtunes Devices.

Is that correct? that would be amazing, because right now I am really missing his feature.


Stefan

[jhollington]

Unfortunately, no. There has been a lot of confusion about this feature since people saw it tucked away in the audio settings menus, so I checked with the Apple TV Product Manager while I was at Macworld...

The real answer is that the Apple TV will simply act as an AirTunes client. This means you can stream music to the Apple TV from iTunes (it will apparently appear in iTunes the same way that an Airport Express does), but it will not provide support for streaming audio from the Apple TV.

[pruppert]

So if you will be able to stream music to ATV as if it were an AirTunes device, will it be possible then to use the apple remote via Apple TV to control playback in iTunes which then would be streamed to the AirTunes base stations and Apple TV?

Thus, iTunes is still the source of the stream but Apple TV would be acting as a kind of reverse remote for the iTunes library. Do you know if this will be the case or will Apple TV Airtunes only be controlled via the iTunes software on the mac?

Thanks.

[clevernick]

So if you will be able to stream music to ATV as if it were an AirTunes device, will it be possible then to use the apple remote via Apple TV to control playback in iTunes which then would be streamed to the AirTunes base stations and Apple TV?

No.

AppleTV will show up as an AirTunes device in iTunes, just like Airport Express. The AppleTV remote will continue to control the AppleTV.

If you want to use that remote, go to the main menu and into Sources, and pick your Mac from the list. Then you can access the files remotely and use the AppleTV remote. You can do this today, no software update needed.

[jhollington]

Originally Posted by pruppert

So if you will be able to stream music to ATV as if it were an AirTunes device, will it be possible then to use the apple remote via Apple TV to control playback in iTunes which then would be streamed to the AirTunes base stations and Apple TV?

Actually, according to an official response I just received from Apple yesterday ("official" in that it was in response to a direct question put to the product manager, not just some guy in an Apple Store), the answer is surprisingly yes. Specifically, the Apple TV remote can be used to pause playback, skip tracks, and fast-forward and rewind through tracks.

I'm guessing when you're playing back via AirTunes, the Apple TV probably goes into a different mode of some kind... Keep in mind that if you're streaming from your iTunes library, you probably don't have your TV on anyway, since that's rather the point of using AirTunes instead of just browsing for the music directly from the Apple TV interface.

[StefanM]

I also read in a german mac magazine that this feature will be in apple tv 2.0
This is an must be in this update because my whole home is full of expres stations :-)

And i am annoyed when giving a party with friends to skip and manage my music from the pc instead of the lcd tv