The recent iOS 4.2 update introduced video and photo streaming from the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch to the Apple TV. At first I wasn’t all too excited for this feature since I just push the content from my iTunes library to the Apple TV so there wasn’t really a point to stream the content from my iOS devices anymore. However the ease of just tapping my iPad to instantly play a movie, Youtube, or slide show on my LCD TV is a mind blowing experience! Here’s a quick walk through of how everything works.
First make sure that AirPlay is activated on your Apple TV. You can add a password if you want. After activating home AirPlay, run a video on your iOS 4.2 device. There should be a new button in the menu which allows you to select if you want the video to be played on the iPad or the Apple TV.
Once you select Apple TV, the screen on the iPad will just turn into a menu while the video plays on your home theater system. You can control the video via the iPad as well.
iOS 4.2 also brings multi-tasking to the iPad and that’s something you can do while streaming the video to the Apple TV. Just press the home button twice and go to the app that you want to use while the video is being played on your TV. Here’s a screen shot:
For just $99 (around P4,500), the Apple TV is a whole lot more attractive especially with the AirPlay feature brought about by iOS 4.2. In my first Apple TV review, I said this:
All-in-all the Apple TV is a cool device to round off your media set especially if you’ve invested in various Apple products. If you don’t mind converting the videos you download to MP4 (like me) so that it’s all in your iTunes Library, then the Apple TV is probably for you. If you’re a PC user though there are other similar products in the market that are cheaper and more PC-friendly that you can purchase.
While it’s true that you still have to convert your videos to iTunes format to store it in your iPad and stream to your TV, Apple is making the effort feel that it’s worth it because of AirPlay. Video formatting also isn’t that much of a big issue anymore due to the rise of easy format conversion applications such as QuickTime and Air Video (my personal favorite).
Looking forward to the day though that I can start streaming Keynote presentations from the iPad to the Apple TV. Now that would really be epic awesome. 
