Hack Lets Apple TV Stream Video from Third Party Apps (Netflix, VLC, etc)

One of the most talked about features in iOS 4.2 (and Apple TV OS 4.1) is support for AirPlay, which lets you stream video from an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to an Apple TV over your home network. Unfortunately, out of the box this feature only works with the default video app. Third party apps like Netflix, VLC, and others aren’t supported — or rather, video from those apps is not supported. You can stream audio from some apps to an Apple TV.

The folks at TUAW decided not to take this sitting down, and they’ve put together a hack that lets you send video from third party apps to an Apple TV.

Right now TUAW’s Erica Sadun refers to the hack as “pre-alpha,” and “a bit unstable.” You may have to reboot from time to time. But right now it’s the only game in town if you want to send third party video from your iDevice to an Apple TV. Oh yeah, you’ll clearly need to jailbreak your device in order to get this working at all.

Hopefully Apple will officially add AirPlay support for third party apps eventually, which would eliminate the need for this kind of hack.

This post republished from Mobiputing.

2 thoughts on “Hack Lets Apple TV Stream Video from Third Party Apps (Netflix, VLC, etc)”

  1. Just tried SlingPlayer for iPad (using a PRO HD) – no go. Also found out SlingPlayer for iPad doesn’t even do video out using the cables…
    I have to find some other alternative to Sling I think, esp. before I trash the one older PRO version for a newer device per their requirements (again). Their players are lacking, expensive, and hardly ever update.

    Back on subject… But yes, this throws video from AirVideo which is cool.

  2. @Dave,

    Zone-MR has built a hack called AirVideoEnabler based on Erica’s work and posted it on Cydia. Apparently it works well, even in things like VLC where I wouldn’t expect it to (does it really work with non-mp4 video? I wouldn’t have thought the iPad transcoded video for AirPlay like this). Haven’t tried it yet, but I am tempted to JailBreak to get this. It’s just a Wi-Fi iPad so not great risk…

    @John,

    Not sure what you’re saying. Seems like you’re saying that the hack doesn’t work with the SlingPlayer app for the iPad. Suspect all you’re saying though is that the SlingPlayer app for the iPad requires one of the two new Sling Boxes, which is well known and was discussed here earlier.

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