AirPlay and AirPort Express

Gareth Llewellyn wrote:
Anyone have any ideas as to whether AirPlay (AirTunes as was) will support audio streaming directly from an iOS device to AirPort Express-powered speakers?

all we know is what apple published so far: http://www.apple.com/itunes/airplay/.

J GG

We now know this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4325

Bottom line: Audio streaming directly from an iOS device to AirPort Express is supported.

Has anyone with iOS 4.2 installed actually done this? I am not getting an AirPlay icon during playback on my iPhone.

Looking more closely at that article, it does not state anywhere that audio streaming directly from an iOS device to Airport Express is supported.

I'm not too Airport Express savvy but here is my experience.

I have an AE in our family room. Prior to 4.2 I had it hooked up to my speaker amp and played iTunes through it from my PC (and the 'Remote' app too.)

I installed 4.2 today hoping I could eliminate the PC middleman and I have been successful. Now I can play music directly from my iPhone & iPad iPod. The little box with the triangle appears next to the song title. From there you can select the AE output to speakers.

What I don't like is I have to select my AE under wi-fi first. Then my email and safari connectivity is lost (until I reselect my normal wi-fi network).

I have an AE and I'm trying to stream from my 4.2 3GS to my AE. I'm not seeing the triangle you're talking about. I mean it works perfectly when I stream music from my Mac to my AE. But I'm not seeing an option to stream from my 3GS.

"The little box with the triangle appears next to the song title. From there you can select the AE output to speakers."

Please let me know how you got it to work. Thanks in advance.

Actually I just restarted my phone and the arrow showed up so now I'm streaming straight from my 3GS to my AE without the Mac as the middle man.

It looks like there is a problem with the refresh aspect of this. After updating it, my AE showed up and I was so happy. I had to go shopping so I left my network and when I came back, AE wasn't there. I restarted my iphone and it showed up. After leaving the network for a while, it happens again. It has to be some kind of search and refresh issue.

I've had the same problem with the new AirPlay triangle not showing up. I simply restarted my 3GS and the AirPlay triangle now appears. No iTunes middleman necessary now.

I have noticed that this method only allows you to stream from the iOS device to one AE or Airplay device at a time. Looks like if you want to stream to multiple sets of speakers/rooms, you'll still have to use the iTunes 10 and Remote Control App.

I have successfully streamed both video to a new Apple TV (2010) and audio to an Airport Express. A couple of notes/issues:

- I also seem to have the Airport Express/iOS 4.0 AirPlay icone refresh issue in the iPhone iPod application. A restart of the iPhone seems to have addressed the issue, though this is an obvious bug which needs to be addressed. FWIW - I tried turning off and back on the iPhone WiFi, but that didn't seem to address the issue.

- While streaming video to the Apple TV, I noticed that the video feed drops when the iPhone screen goes black. This happens whether the phone "times out" and the blank screen is invoked, or if you manually invoke the black screen by pressing the button on the top of the phone. I'm not sure if this is a "feature" (in which case, very annoying) or a "bug" - but either way its not ideal. Having to keep the screen on your iPhone to keep the video playing is best case annoying as you need to keep "poking" your device, and at worse an unnecessary battery drain with little benefit to the user.

- I was also able to stream a YouTube video from the iPhone to Apple TV, which I found cool.

- I was also able to stream photos from my iPhone albums to the Apple TV, which was also cool. However, I wasn't able to stream videos from my iPhone albums to the Apple TV (i.e. videos I had taken with the iPhone camera). This is also a bit of an annoying oversight - it would be great to be able to share videos in this way, for example after a day out.

The iPhone/iPad/Airport Express/Apple TV/AirPlay axis shows a lot of promise, but so far seems to be a bit of a work in progress...

I look forward to when this functionality gets straightened out.

I'd like to know if your AE is part of a larger network, or if it is a "stand alone" network? When I had mt Airport Express as a stand alone network, I was able to stream to it directly from my iOS devices. The problem was that then my internet didn't work on those devices because the AE was not connected to the internet in any way. I added the AE to my home network to fix this. Now my iMac still sees the AE, but the iOS devices do not. I did try restarting my iOS devices, but that did not help. It seems that I can only stream music directly from iOS to the AE if the AE is set up as a stand alone network. The problem is that I have to change networks on the iOS device each time, and I'll lose internet while I'm streaming music.

My situation is a little different in that my AE is also the primary router for my home network right now. So it is definitely on my home network, and definitely connected to the internet.

OK so I got it working on my AE by rebooting my iPhone 4 a second time after I upgraded to IOS 4.2

Hope this works for others.

3gs iphone (ios 4.2) wifi to airport to stereo

the airplay icon didnt show up for me until i rebooted iphone 3gs. my airport is joined to my existing wifi and stereo. works well. saves going through a powered up pc. good work.

I had the audio working to airport express right after the update, but here are a few questions...

1. anyone know how to go from their iOS device to more than one airport express (or AirPlay) unit at once?
2. is it possible (the way Airfoil does it) to go from an iOS device to a Mac - in my case, a mini?
3. I see the icon on video as well and it looks like i can throw video to the Airport express units as well - anyone know how to get those units to output to a monitor?