Streaming media across your network is easy
with Airplay and Apple TV, but only Apple-friendly formats are supported, and
although you can convert media if necessary - as we’ll see over the page - you
probably want to watch a film without waiting a couple of hours for that
process to complete. So if you have a lot of content that you acquired away
from the iTunes Store, perhaps stored as AVIs or MPEGs, a way to stream them
from your Mac directly would be useful. You may also want to watch videos
stored elsewhere on your local network on your iPad or iPhone, without having
to copy them to the device and fill up its storage.
The answer is a third party app that can
stream video in multiple formats, transcoding it on the fly if necessary,
without relying on iTunes or Airplay.
A TV tuner such as Elgato’s EyeTV Mobile lets you watch broadcast TV on iOS;
there are plenty of such add-ons for Macs, too, supporting Free-view reception
Video streaming apps
Available for $3 from inmethod.com, Air
video comes in two parts: a server app that runs on your Mac or PC, and a
companion app for your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. There’s also a free version,
which has minor limitations such as only displaying a small number of playlist
items.
Air video
Launch the server app on your Mac and
specify the folders where it should look for movies. If they’re already in
formats supported by iOS, they can be streamed directly to your device. If they
are in unsupported formats (WMV, MKV, DivX and FLV are supported, among
others), the software can convert them live as the movie streams across your
network. This requires a reasonably quick Mac: a Core 2 Duo or better processor
is recommended, but this is hardly high-end by today’s standards. You’ll need a
decent wireless network, too, but again, nothing out of the ordinary. If your
Mac struggles with live conversion, there’s the option to convert the whole
movie offline before streaming it, and even a conversion queue so you can ‘fire
and forget’.
StreamToMe (projectswithlove.com/streamtome)
works in much the same way; the Mac server app is currently free from the Mac
App Store, while the iOS app costs $3. It supports a range of input formats
with live and offline conversion features. As well as supporting DVD resolution
video over your Wi-Fi network, it can adjust the stream automatically to play
smoothly to a remote Wi-Fi or 3G connection over the internet. It also lets
you use a TV out cable from your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad to connect to a TV
and use the device as a wireless streaming media center to get content from
your Mac or PC to your TV without needing an Apple TV or other streaming box.
The developer recommends a 2.4GHz Intel
Core 2 Duo or faster processor for 720p video, which excludes older Macs.
Media server apps
Media server software works by using the
UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) protocol to open up a wireless connection to
your network and broadcast the availability of your media files to specific
devices. This is the kind of app you’ll need to use with a DLNA box or
DLNA-equipped TV set.
Media server apps
As we mentioned earlier, Twonky Media is
the best known UPnP media server app.
It costs $19.9 from twonky.com, and
connects your Mac to any DLNA device on your network, including TVs, games
consoles, AV systems, NAS boxes, digital media adaptors and mobile devices. The
Twonky Manager app (try to ignore the name) also provides a sort of centralized
hub on your computer for managing data from other devices, so you can do stuff
like automatically copying pictures taken on your iPhone to your Mac via Wi-Fi
- an alternative to iCloud’s Photo Stream.
Twonky lets you use your mobile devices as
remotes for controlling the playback of media on a TV streamed from a Mac,
similar to the way Apple’s Remote app works with Airplay and an Apple TV.
iSedora Media Server is another option: it
streams video, music and photos from your Mac or PC to DLNA compatible TVs,
Blu-Ray players and consoles like the PS3 and XBox. It can transcode on the fly
for several devices at once, and even supports streaming subtitles as part of a
movie. There’s a fully functional downloadable demo that can be started as
often as you like, but will quit after an hour. The base version costs $25
from isedora.com, and serves one DNLA device at a time. To share to unlimited
devices you need the $69 multi-room license.
Playing on the PS3
If you already have a Sony PlayStation 3
plugged into your TV, it makes sense to take advantage of its media streaming
capabilities. Yazsoft’s Playback (yazsoft.com/ products/playback) is a popular
Mac server app for this purpose.
PS3
The PS3 Media Server app, on the other hand
(ps3mediaserver.org), is available for Mac, PC and Linux and is completely
free. Powered by Men coder, ffMPEG and other video libraries, it can stream
many video file types directly or transcode them live. Although it was
originally developed for the PS3, and works seamlessly with the console, it’s
actually a more generic DLNA- compliant UPnP streamer and supports a wide
variety of devices including the XBox, Sony Bravia TVs, and Android devices,
Samsung TVs and Boxee, among many others. You can specify folders to share,
control streaming and transcoding settings and even access your iTunes
library, just fire it up and it appears as a media source on your device.
TV on your Apple
Want to watch live TV on your Mac? It’s not
as easy as hooking up a Free-view unit or your Virgin or Sky box to the
machine. The 2010 iMac was the only model that could accept an incoming HDMI
signal, with an adaptor such as the Kanex XD (kanexlive.com/xd); there’s no
equivalent adaptor yet for the current Thunderbolt model. And even if you could
rig up some sort of Heath Robinson connection, today’s copy protected HD
content wouldn’t play over it.
TV on your Apple
However, there are plenty of products that
let you receive free-to-air channels directly from an aerial on your Mac or iOS
device. Elgato, Equinox, and Hauppauge all sell tuners that connect to your Mac
via USB and allow you to watch and record live TV from either Free-view or
Free-sat. Elgato’s Eye-TV Hybrid can receive both, as well as analogue TV and
Subscribers to Sky and Virgin Media who take both broadband and TV services can
watch TV shows and films on the relevant company’s websites. Sky viewers can
also watch on its mobile app, Sky Go. Virgin has a mobile app, which can be
used by anyone, but it charges for access.
The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 each
offer catch-up services on their websites and via iOS apps. And the BBC allows
UK license payers to watch live TV on the web or from its app. Viewers outside
the UK can’t access iPlayer, although if you download programs while in the UK
you can then watch them abroad. There’s a paid-for international iOS app, too,
but it’s not available on the UK App Store. You can’t watch ITV Player or 40D
outside the UK, either through a Google search will turn up VPN tunneling
services and suggestions for UK proxy servers, which let you to make it look as
if you’re in the UK, if you’re really keen.
The website TVCatchUp, which also has an
iOS app, streams 40 channels, including mainstream terrestrial networks, free
of charge for UK users. Again, it’s only accessible from within the UK.
Finally, Vulkano Flow (myvulkano.com)
connects to a cable or satellite box and allows you to control it and view its
output on your Mac or iPad, over a Wi-Fi network or the internet. It’s a
terrific idea, but we had a number of problems when we tested it last year.
Sling-box (uk.slingbox.com/go/slingbox-solo) also makes boxes which allow you
to view content from your cable or satellite box over the internet.
