iPhone Personal hotspot & Apple TV..

Question

iPhone Personal hotspot & Apple TV..

I have just tried using the personal hotspot from my iPhone 4 as the wireless network to stream media to my Apple TV. Basically no wifi connection, just the personal hotspot and then connecting the Apple TV to the iPhone as you would normally connect to a wifi network...

Well, it works flawlessly as far as I can tell so far. I have briefly tried streaming movies and it works perfectly.

Does anybody know if using the iPhone personal hotspot in this fashion will use cellular data? I am in the UK on Orange/EE. It seems to be a really good solution but obviously if it uses loads of tethering data it's not really worth it.

As far as I can see it shouldn't use cellular data because its a direct connection between the iPhone and the ATV.

Does anybody know if it uses cellular data?

iPhone 4, iOS 6.1, iPhone 4, Apple TV 3rd Gen

Posted on Feb 18, 2013 9:23 AM

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Answer 1

deggie

Level 10

167,327 points

Feb 18, 2013 9:26 AM in response to Community User

What is the iPhone connected to in order to access the internet?

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Answer 2

Feb 18, 2013 9:27 AM in response to Community User

If you have your Apple TV connected to the iPhone by way of the HotSpot feature, it will definitely be using your cellular data.

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Answer 3

Jul 6, 2015 10:06 AM in response to deggie

Its on the 3G as the wifi was off - the idea was to try it for more mobile use of the ATV on holiday etc where there is no wifi.

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Answer 4

deggie

Level 10

167,327 points

Feb 18, 2013 9:30 AM in response to Community User

Then you will be using a lot of cellular data.

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Answer 5

Jul 6, 2015 10:06 AM in response to stedman1

So does it stream using the 3G?

I was hoping it would be just a direct wifi-type network connection between the iPhone and the ATV :-(

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Answer 6

Feb 18, 2013 9:35 AM in response to Community User

Well, you have a WiFi connection from your Apple TV to your iPhone, no problem there. However, to access the outside world (Internet) you will be using your 3G data. You can verify this by streaming video content via your Apple TV - iPhone connection and make note of the data usage within your iPhone settings.

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Answer 7

Jul 6, 2015 10:06 AM in response to stedman1

I may have confused with the use of the term 'streaming' - I'm actually playing a movie directly from the iPhone memory, not streaming from the internet. I suppose 'mirroring' is more accurate.

Playing a movie from iPhone to ATV - using personal hotspot only in place of wifi network - will this still use 3G data?

Sorry for the confusion!

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Answer 8

deggie

Level 10

167,327 points

Feb 18, 2013 9:42 AM in response to Community User

If you are mirroring this will not use your cell connection or data...but I would test it to be sure.

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Answer 9

wjosten

Level 10

95,345 points

Feb 18, 2013 9:43 AM in response to Community User

You've created an Ad Hoc network & you're not using any cellular data.

I do this all the time at my vacation home.

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Answer 10

Jul 6, 2015 10:06 AM in response to deggie

That's what I thought, great!

I'll re-run the test and i'll resent my 3G data use and see if it uses data for mirroring. I didn't think of that initially.

Thanks for all of the help, i'll update when I have had a chance to try it again.

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Answer 11

Jul 6, 2015 10:06 AM in response to wjosten

Superb!

That's great - i'll run a quick test later but if you're using it I can't see why my setup will be any different.

Many thanks!

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Answer 12

BradCook

Level 1

0 points

Sep 4, 2015 9:52 PM in response to Community User

NO, it does not use your cell data. The Apple TV sees the iPhone as a LOCAL network. The data is transferred directly from your media library thru your iphone to the Apple TV with home sharing. Not once does the data transfer thru your phone company's towers. I often times use my AT&T hotspot (which for all intents and purposes is identical to using your iPhone hotspot) for accessing my media library on Apple TV and I turn off the broadband. It continues transferring data without access to the WWW and no data usage gets recorded. You can also watch your usage not go up under your iPhone data usage in settings while using the hotspot for Apple TV. Also works for home sharing to other devices such as iPad in the same way.

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Answer 13

Nov 17, 2015 4:59 PM in response to BradCook

Wow, this is exactly what I was trying to figure out.

I was hoping to set up my Apple TV in my travel trailer and use the hot spot from my iPhone to connect my Apple TV and iPad and stream movies from my iPad. Does this sound like something that would work?

I also want to attempt to connect a Sonos Play 5 speaker to the optical out of my Apple TV as the stereo system is horrible in my trailer.

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