Apple AirPlay is a wireless streaming technology that lets you broadcast audio and video to other devices. This elevates your home theater experience, and lets you share your media around your home.

Goes without saying that this could be one of the most important additions to your setup.

Let’s check what the fuss is all about.

No wires

Obviously, the who deal is to do away with the fuss of using wires. Chances are that if you own an Apple device like the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or even an Mac or Windows PC running iTunes, you have probably heard of AirPlay.

Although some features of this wireless connectivity technology were available under a different name, AirTunes, it only allowed the streaming of music, not the other kind of data. Apple officially rolled out the AirPlay monitor in the fall of 2010, along with an expanded and enhanced feature set. Fast forward to today, and you have third-party consumer electronics manufacturers adding it to their products — a significant development.

AirPlay lets users broadcast their audio, video, photos, and even the content of their screens to compatible WiFi connected devices. Want to play the music on your phone over a stereo system at a party? You will need to use AirPlay. Need to show a movie stored on your tablet on a TV? AirPlay is what you are looking for.

AirPlay

AirPlay requirements

AirPlay is available on every device sold by Apple today. And seeing as this is a simply a wireless communication technology, it has been used for everything from media streaming to screen mirroring and even printing. You can print what you have on your mobile device to an AirPlay supported printer.

Now, admittedly, when it comes to home theaters, not all components are compatible with AirPlay. But an increasing number of manufacturers now include support for this technology as a feature for their products — most notably speakers and media boxes. The only real condition is that all devices must be on the same wireless network to communicate via AirPlay. What this means is that you can’t stream music to your home from your iPhone at work.

AirPlay

Streaming stuff

AirPlay is made up of a proprietary set of protocols that enable you to use your Apple devices to stream media over your WiFi network. For digital music, as an example, you can stream your audio to your television that is equipped with an Apple TV box or listen with AirPlay compatible speakers. It’s even possible to stream your music to several rooms equipped these speaker systems. And the best part is that AirPlay can just as easily stream metadata, meaning details like song title, artist, genre, and album art can be transmitted and displayed using the technology.

In fact, Apple TV and AirPlay is a powerful combination that supports music, videos, photos and even content streamed from apps to be displayed on different devices. All you need to do is to make sure that AirPlay is enabled on the Apple TV in the Settings menu, and then connect your devices using the AirPlay icon and begin streaming your content.

Same is the case with speakers and other modern home theater equipment, with AirPlay allowing simple and streamlined streaming of all your content — as long as you have Apple hardware.

If not, then there are a number of different competing standards like Google Cast, WiDi, Miracast, UPnP, and DLNA that offer similar functionality. These technologies are even more widely used than Apple AirPlay, and allow you to connect the different components of your home theater together to enliven your entertainment experience.