Tuesday 19 July 2011

Using Apple's Airplay with BBC iPlayer

As most people will have found out, and complained about, the web site for BBC iPlayer does not issue the code needed to enable Airplay when viewing programs. For example you can view iPlayer on a PC, Mac, iPad or iPhone platform (the PC and Mac platform need Abobe's closed standard Flash installed, the iPad and iPhone feeds are in open standard MP4/H264 format). But on the iPad or iPhone the Airplay icon does not appear and you cannot stream the programs to your big screen TV using an Apple TV.

But I found that there is a work-around!

1 Switch off WiFi on your iPhone and access the iPlayer using 3G (if your ISP allows this, I use '3' who encourage this, just as they promote Skype...)

2 Chose the program you want to watch, let it start, then pause its playback.

3 Enable WiFi on your home network where you have also an Apple TV connected. Then resume playback.

You will now see the Airplay icon by the side of the volume slider, chose this and chose your Apple TV, and hey presto the program is on your TV.

Open it up, BBC

This seems a stupid distraction and I hope the BBC does not try to block it. What they need to do is respond to the many, many requests to allow Airplay streaming from iPad and iPhone to your TV. If this way of viewing programs is enabled it would also allow a first step to a holy grail of allowing users to access the web on their iPads at the same time as watching a program on TV, but with a potential link between the material (actor's biographies, statistics and facts, etc)

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