Airfoil: Stream Any Audio to Apple TV

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I’d like to thank Ben for loaning me his Apple TV at a good time. The folks behind Airfoil, which I’ve never heard of until today, just released an application update that streams any audio from a Mac or Windows PC to Apple TV (or other Macs, PCs, and Airport Expresses, too). In under a minute I easily linked the Airfoil software to Firefox and was listening to XM Online and Pandora via Apple TV.

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Streaming media to set-top boxes isn’t new – in fact, I wrote an Engadget article covering a convoluted TiVo music streaming method two years ago and have used Connect360 to play Mac content on my Xbox 360. However, like Connect360, what makes Airfoil notable is it’s simplicity.

Airfoil is available as a free demo (which I’m using) limited to 10 minutes of unaltered audio playback or it’ll run you $25 to unlock the app.

3 thoughts on “Airfoil: Stream Any Audio to Apple TV”

  1. Airfoil can be linked to any application such as Real’s player or Safari. It can also transmit all audio from a Mac. You can transmit to multiple devices simultaneously and in sync, too.

  2. Rogue Amoeba Rocks!!! I’ve got a few of their apps, and I love em. I record Sirius everyday with Audio Hijack Pro.

  3. Wow, this is so awesome! I’m listening to Pandora on my Apple TV right now!!! Always loved Pandora, but I just don’t tend to listen to that much music on my computer. And I don’t have a device at the moment with native Pandora support. It was trivial to set up, I didn’t even have to do anything on my Apple TV–it just started playing.

    Now while the latter makes it easy to use, I do wish there were more control here. It appears that if I do anything on the Apple TV after Airfoil starts streaming (i.e. playing audio) it stops Airfoil from working, and there’s no easy way to get it back.

    I also wish you got a little more information on screen while Airfoil was streaming. Like Artist, Song, even Album graphics… One of the really nice things about Pandora is finding other artists you might like, and that won’t really work here unless you run over to the computer to check out what you just heard. But still, nits compared to having Pandora access available at all. A great way to stream music for a party.

    Thanks Dave! They’ve got another customer.

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