| By Whitson Gordon How to Make Your Entire Home AirPlay-Compatible
On its own, AirPlay only streams media from iTunes or iOS to the Apple TV or AirPort Express routers. You could make up for this disadvantage by using alternatives to AirPlay instead, but AirPlay is so simple to use, and the most well integrated option, that it's the best option out there for inter-device media streaming. With just a few third-party programs and tweaks, you can stream music, photos and video over AirPlay to nearly any device in your house—even the non-Apple ones. For a quick demonstration of how AirPlay works, see the video above. What You'll NeedWhen you stream via AirPlay, you have two devices to worry about: the source (that is, the device doing the streaming), and the destination (the device receiving the media). So at minimum, you'll need one device you can set up as a source, and one device you can set up as a destination. Below, we'll explain how to set up: AirPlay Destinations:
Then we'll walk through how to set up: AirPlay Sources
Turning Unsupported Devices into AirPlay Destinations
Streaming to Windows
Streaming to Your Mac
Streaming to iOS
Sadly, if you want to stream from non-iTunes sources, you're out of luck for now—Apple keeps pulling apps that let you do this from the App Store, and those developers have yet to put their apps in Cydia for jailbroken users. Streaming to Android
Streaming to XBMC, Boxee, and PlexIf you have a home theater PC running XBMC, Boxee, or Plex, you can use the AirPlayer Python script to use it as an AirPlay destination.. Installation is different on every system, so we won't go too deeply into it here. Check out this page for more detailed installation instructions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. If you're running a Live XBMC installation like on our standalone XBMC media center, you'll want to follow these instructions to get AirPlay up and running. Note that AirPlayer only streams video; it won't work with music. Turning Unsupported Devices into AirPlay SourcesiTunes and iOS will stream music and video just fine, but if you listen to music and watch videos using other apps or platforms, here's how to turn them into AirPlay sources. Streaming from Other Apps in iOSWhile the Music and Video apps in iOS will stream over AirPlay out of the box, apps like Safari or VLC won't. If you've jailbroken your iPhone or iPad, however, you can use previously mentioned AirVieoEnabler to enable AirPlay in other iOS apps. Just install the app from Cydia, restart your device, and you should see the AirPlay icon pop up in most other media playing apps. Streaming from Android
Now, whenever you play a song or video in doubleTwist, you'll see a small Wi-Fi icon next to the player controls. Tap this to pick from a list of AirPlay-compatible devices and stream the video to them. Streaming from Other Apps on Your PC or MacIf you want to stream audio from, say, a non-iTunes music player or your browser to an AirPort Express (or other AirPlay-enabled device), you have a few options. The best option is Airfoil, which is a $30 app for both Windows and Mac that will sync and stream audio from any source to AirPlay-compatible hardware. If you want to do that for free, previously mentioned RaopX will do the trick nicely on OS X, albeit with a bit of extra work and a significant audio delay. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a good free option for Windows. There are still a few holes in this strategy (like streaming video to Windows or streaming audio to XBMC), but overall it makes AirPlay much, much more versatile with just a few simple tools. Now, you can stream audio and video nearly anywhere in your house, all with just the click of a button. Got any of your own preferred methods for streaming media via AirPlay? Share them with us in the comments.
| May 18th, 2011 Top Stories |
Apple's new media-streaming technology, 
In this section, we'll detail how to set up Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and XBMC to work as AirPlay destinations. Remember that you'll need an AirPlay source, too, like iTunes, iOS, or one of the sources we talk about in the second section. Once you have them set up as destinations, all you need to do to play media on them is choose them from the AirPlay list on your source device, as seen at the left.
If you have an iPhone but you use Windows on the desktop (or you just have a diverse house of Windows PCs and Macs), you can stream AirPlay music to Windows using free utility 
To stream media to your Mac,all you need is the simple, open source 
Streaming audio and video from iTunes to iOS is actually built-in to iTunes, but it isn't under the banner of AirPlay, which might cause a lot of people to miss it. All you need to do is log into Home Sharing in iTunes on the computer holding all the media, then log into Home Sharing in Settings > iPod on your iPhone or iPad (on iPod touches, it's in Settings > Music). Once you do, you should see a new "Shared" tab pop up in your iPod app (you might need to hit "More" to see it). From there, you can navigate to your iTunes library and play any music or video from that library, including videos that weren't purchased on iTunes.
If you'd like to stream music to music on your Android phone, a simple app called 
One of our favorite 
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