Show notes for this episode:

• Plair is available for $99 online. More information about the device can be found on Plair’s website.
• Plair isn’t the only one looking to bring AirPlay-like features to other devices. Netflix and YouTube are working on an open standard for this kind of feature as well. Check out our report.
• Don’t forget our e-book Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable to learn more about various devices that help you to get rid of cable. The book is available for $5 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes.

Are you interested in a device like Plair? Or are you using any of the other methods to beam content to your TV? Let us know in the comments below, get in touch with us on Twitter (@cordcutters) or email us at cordcutters @ gigaom.com. Also, please check out our new Google+ Cord Cutters community!

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Using your Apple TV

If your home is fully equipped with Apple products, the easiest way to watch home movies privately is by using an Apple TV.  There are several options to display your home movies on your Apple TV, it just depends on which Apple device you happen to have your movies on.

From your iOS device: With point and shoot cameras dropping in sales by 30 percent in recent months, more people are using their iPhones to capture all of their personal moments on video.  Provided you are running iOS 4.3 or greater, when the video files are still on your iPhone, you can view them directly on the AppleTV using AirPlay. Simply turn on your Apple TV, tap on the AirPlay icon and select which AppleTV you want to view your videos on.

Directly from your Mac: If you do not have an iPhone, and you have been off loading your video files from your digital camera directly to your Mac, you can still use AirPlay from your Mac to watch your videos on your Apple TV.  Macs running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion can also stream their entire screens directly to an Apple TV using AirPlay Mirroring.

If you do not have a newer generation AirPlay-capable Mac (mid-2011 or newer), you still have two choices.  The first is an app in the Mac App Store called HUDTube ($4.99, Mac).  This is the only video player app in the Mac App Store that supports streaming to an Apple TV using AirPlay.  With HudTube, you simply drag and drop the video file you want to view, and select the Apple TV you wish to stream to.

The second solution for your Mac is to use a product called Air Parrot ($9.99, Mac).  This product brings the same AirPlay streaming capabilities to older Macs.  One nice feature that Air Parrot has that Apple’s own AirPlay Mirroring does not is the ability to select just one app window.  This feature is called “App Mirroring.”  As an example, with App Mirroring you can display just the QuickTime Player rather then your entire desktop.

Home Sharing from iTunes: You can also use iTunes on your Mac to stream your home movies to your Apple TV.  Beginning with version 10.1 of iTunes, you have been able to share your video files alongside your photos with Home Sharing.  Home Sharing is a way to share your entire iTunes Library on your local network to all of your Apple devices.  It is easy to enable, but does require that you have an iTunes account.  Keep in mind that all Home Sharing will be limited to devices that are configured with that account.

Once you have Home Sharing enabled in iTunes, from iTune’s File menu go back to Home Sharing menu item and click on “Choose Photos to Share with AppleTV.”  Here you can select either an iPhoto Library, an Aperture Library, or any other folder on your Mac containing photos and videos you want to share.  Just be sure to check “Include Videos” when you first set this up.

To watch your shared movies, you must also enable Home Sharing on your Apple TV.  Now you will be able to select any one of the movies you shared by accessing them from the “Computer” icon on the home menu of your Apple TV.  Even thought they are videos, they will be listed under “Photos” of your computer’s Home Sharing library.  Keep in mind that this Home Sharing solution is limited to your devices connected to your home network.

Direct connection with cables

If you do not have an Apple TV connected to your HDTV, the next best thing is to use a cable to connect your Apple device directly to your HDTV.  How you connect to the HDTV will depend on which Apple product you have and the type of connectors your television supports.  For the most recent Macs that come equipped with either a mini display port or Thunderbolt, there is the Belkin Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter for $34.95 which will allow you to connect your Mac to an HDTV using an HDMI connection.

For your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad that still has the older 30-pin connector, you can use the Apple Composite AV Cable for $39.  While this is not an HDMI solution, it does connect to a wider variety of home theater equipment.  There are also the Lightning Digital AV Adapter for $49 that works with the iPhone 5 and latest version of the iPad that come with the new Lightning connector.  Each of these solutions will allow you to play back your movies from your Apple device directly to your HDTV.

Copy files to USB thumb drive

If your Mac is not near your home theater equipment, or you just don’t want to mess with cables every time you want to watch a home movie, you may be able to watch your video files from a USB thumb drive.  Many of todays home theater appliances come equipped with a USB port.  The challenge here is getting your home videos into a format that your device can display.  To convert mine, I have always used Handbrake (Free, Mac).  Handbrake is capable of reading in a wide variety of video formats and can export to the industry standard H.264.

If you are looking for a solution that works just as well, but is available through the Mac App Store, then try Smart Converter Pro ($4.99, Mac).  Like Handbrake, Smart Converter Pro can convert all of your home movies in a batch process.  Unlike Handbrake, it can also encode your home movies to DivX, a popular video format that a lot of older home theater equipment still supports.  Once you have your home movies in the format that you need, simply copy them over to your USB thumb drive and plug it into your home theater equipment.

Host your own UPnP/DLNA media server

Another option is to host your own Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) or Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) media server from your Mac.  Most smart HDTVs, Blu-ray Disc players, Roku and popular game consoles like the XBox and Playstation all can play videos served up by a UPnP/DLNA server.  The problem with this solution historically has been finding a media server solution that your home theater appliance works well with.  This sounds complicated but it really is not.  It is basically the same thing that iTunes does via AirPlay to the Apple TV outlined above.  Just think of UPnP/DLNA as AirPlay for the rest of the home theater market.

For the Mac, there are two popular media server solutions that are UPnP/DLNA compliant.  The first is Plex Media Server (Free, Mac).  Plex has been around for a while now and has done a great job of ensuring that its solution works well on a wide variety of devices.  Once installed, there are tutorials and instructions to help publish your local video files over your home network.

The second solution that does not have nearly all of the features the Plex has — but does a great job at serving up a folder full of home movies — is Serviio (Free, Mac).  Both solutions are easy to set up and will provide access to your home movies to almost any UPnP/DLNA compliant device attached to your home network.

There are several options available to you when it comes to watching home movies at home.  Not every solution requires that you use only Apple products to record and watch your home movies.  Each one offers its own benefits, from being able to play back your recently recorded videos directly from your iPhone, to storing years of home movies on your Mac and being able to bring them up any time you want to view them.

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An announcement on Google+ states in part:

“Anyone on the same WiFi can join in to control the video or add videos to a playlist (Harlem Shake marathon anyone?). This feature is also available on the YouTube app for Android, and it’s coming to more TVs this year from LG, Sony, Panasonic and others.”

The updated YouTube app allows users to browse for videos and then initiate playback on the TV screen. A key part of this is discovery: The app automatically finds compatible devices within the same network — something that’s similar to the ease-of-use of Apple’s AirPlay. Of course, the big difference is that AirPlay limits video playback to the Apple TV, whereas YouTube wants to bring remote playback to as many devices as possible.

YouTube’s remote playback technology is in part based on DIAL, an open framework for second screen functionalities that YouTube has been developing in cooperation with Netflix. Google Product Manager Timbo Drayson told me in November that YouTube’s ultimate goal was “to move the whole industry forward” with this kind of technology.

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Kessler also reiterated the notion that HBO won’t offer a standalone HBO Go online subscription any time soon. “The economics today are not particularly compelling. Now that doesn’t mean that may not change,” he said.

He went on to explain that the cable provider’s key asset isn’t carriage, but promotion and packaging. Pay TV operators clock ten million transactions for HBO each year, Kessler said, but HBO isn’t paying any of their customer representatives.

Still, there may be a silver lining for cord cutters who want to watch HBO without paying for cable some time – except, it may take a long time for HBO to get there. “We can certainly do it when we want to,” Kessler said. “Today, that’s not the case.”

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YouTube and Netflix have been collaborating quietly on these efforts for months. Word first got out when some inquisitive users discovered traces of DIAL back in December. The DIAL website publicly launched with little fanfare and a brief mention on Engadget earlier this month, and now, Netflix is for the first time sharing some key details of the project with GigaOM.

The partnership: Why YouTube and Netflix teamed up for DIAL

Both Netflix and YouTube have been working on second-screen apps for some time. Netflix launched a limited second-screen integration in October, and YouTube released its first Android remote control app all the way back in 2010. The Google-owned video site has since simplified that experience, and Google product manager Timbo Drayson told me in November that YouTube’s goal was to partner with others on these efforts. “We really want to move the whole industry forward,” he said.

Netflix launched second-screen control for Sony’s PS3 in October.

Turns out that one of these partners is Netflix. “We realized in the fall of 2011 that we could create some potentially useful 2nd screen experiences,” Scott Mirer, director of product management at Netflix, told me via email this week, adding:

“At about the same time, we learned that the YouTube team was interested in much the same thing – they had already started to do some work on 2nd screen use cases. And so we approached them on collaborating… We also felt that having two major video services define and promote DIAL would help get it more widely adopted as a common solution to a common problem, vs. taking a proprietary approach. It’s been a productive partnership and we’re confident that we’ll get wider adoption because of it.”

The technology: What DIAL is all about

DIAL stands for “discovery and launch,” which pretty much sums up what the protocol is meant to do. DIAL-enabled second screen apps will be able to discover DIAL-ready first-screen devices in the same network and launch apps on them. That may sound trivial, but it’s actually solving a big problem for second screen app developers.

DIAL is all about bridging the gap between the first and the second screen. (Image credit: DIAL website)

Take Netflix’s current second-screen experiments, for example. PS3 owners can already browse Netflix’s catalog on their smartphone and then launch those titles on the game console, but they have to first manually launch the app on both devices. And using your phone as a remote control doesn’t make all that much sense if you still need to use that other remote control (or gamepad, in this case) as well.

With DIAL, the Netflix app on your phone will automatically discover that there is a device with a Netflix app connected to your TV. It will fire up that app, and then the two apps are free to do whatever they want — which presumably involves some healthy binge-viewing. (For the more technically-minded readers: DIAL is using UPnP multicast for the discovery piece of the puzzle, and a REST-service to launch apps on discovered devices.)

The competition: How DIAL compares to AirPlay

The beauty of AirPlay: It just works – thanks to automatic device discovery.

AirPlay is often thought of as a way to mirror content displayed on your iPad or iPhone on your Apple TV, but that’s only part of the puzzle. One key part of AirPlay is device discovery. Any iOS device will immediately discover any AirPlay-capable speaker or Apple TV in your local network. It just works, which is one of the big advantages of AirPlay over competing solutions, and one of the things that DIAL wants to achieve.

AirPlay can also send URLs from your iPad to your Apple TV to initiate playback of remote content, and of course it can mirror your iPad’s display on your TV screen. DIAL doesn’t do any of that, which was a deliberate design choice, Mirer told me:

“Once apps from the same provider are running on both screens, there are several feasible methods for implementing control protocols either through the cloud or on the local network. And not every service or application is focused on the same kinds of use cases. Rather than try to get universal agreement on these protocols and use cases, it seemed best to leave room for innovation.”

But there are other areas where DIAL actually goes beyond AirPlay’s capabilities. First, the obvious: AirPlay can’t launch any apps on your Apple TV. DIAL will also be able to detect whether an app is installed, and redirect a user to a smart TV’s app store in case it’s missing. Also cool: DIAL will be able to launch web apps on your TV, if the device supports it, which should add a whole lot of new functionality to connected devices.

The future: Where DIAL goes from here

Google TV devices apparently already support some parts of DIAL, and a number of high-profile CE makers are ready add their support as well.

One of DIAL’s little secrets is that parts of it are already out in the wild. Current-generation Google TV devices already support DIAL, and I’ve been told by third-party developers that some 2012 Samsung and LG TVs also already incorporate some DIAL functionality.

Netflix didn’t want to go into details about unannounced products or features from hardware partners, but Mirer told me that many vendors have DIAL-compatible devices or software updates that would add this functionality to existing devices in the works. “Expect to start seeing them in the next several months,” he said.

Two high-profile CE vendors in particular seem to be heavily invested in the future of DIAL. Samsung and Sony were both mentioned in the protocol’s specs. Mirer said that the companies helped a lot with practical feedback:

“Both Sony and Samsung generously invested some effort and their feedback really helped us tighten up the protocol and make it compatible with their existing software. We fully expect them to include DIAL in many of their products going forward.”

DIAL is also getting some support from content services and app makers. The project launched a registry on its website for companies that want to take advantage of DIAL much in the same way Netflix and YouTube want to, and the first ones to sign up include the BBC, Hulu, Pandoraand Flingo. There are also efforts underway to bring dial to Chrome, which would make it possible to launch apps on your TV straight from your browser.

In recent conversations at CES, I’ve heard some considerable interest from others as well. And with enough support, DIAL may not just be able to take on AirPlay, but eventually reshape how we interact with digital media in the living room.

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The new iOS app, which comes both with an iPhone and an iPad UI, mirrors the look and feel of Skifta’s Android app. It can be used to stream content from sources like a network-attached storage drive to an iPad or to stream content from the iPad to an AirPlay or DLNA-capable stereo or TV set. Skifta also offers access to a number of online channels that pull in content from services like Soundcloud, Rdio or Flickr.

Having the ability to stream music or video from an iPad to a DLNA-capable TV set is already pretty neat, but Skifta wants to make many more devices available to both iOS and Android users over the coming months. Skifta recently struck a partnership with ODM speaker maker Tymphany to bring its audio module to soundbars and networked wireless speakers.

That fits right in with the bigger vision behind Skifta: Qualcomm Atheros has long viewed Skifta as a way to promote larger initiatives around the connected house. Skifta Director of Product Marketing Gary Brotman told me during a conversation at CES earlier this week that he envisions Skifta-enabled devices will eventually not just play media, but also receive audio notifications from other devices around the house. Your soundbar may stop playing your music and alert you if your washing machine malfunctions, or if someone is at the door, he said.

Here are a few screenshots of the app:

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And don’t get me started on the approach taken by companies like Samsung and LG who reckon that, once you’ve bought their TV set, you’ll stick to their brand for handsets just so you can get easy streaming from one to the other. Most people don’t think like that, so hardly anyone uses the functionality. What a waste of the connectivity built into these TVs.

All of which is why I rather like the idea of Zapstreak‘s SDK, which has just come out of beta. I love the idea of pairing up the mobile device and television set – I want to use the zippy apps on my phone or tablet, not the clunky efforts built into my so-called smart TV – but I don’t want to be hemmed into some artificially walled garden. Miracast goes part of the way here, but even there you need special chips on either side.

The cool thing with Zapstreak’s SDK is that it allows Android apps to communicate with a wide variety of Wi-Fi-enabled devices, from TVs to gaming consoles and hi-fis – Zapstreak essentially provides a layer on top of the increasingly ubiquitous but severely underused DLNA standard, so anything that has that built in will work.

Variety

Zapstreak is a Polish company that’s had its SDK in beta since April, during which time it says it’s had around 100 developers giving active feedback. Here’s what co-founder Stefan Bielau has to say about that experience:

“It took a bit longer because there were various use cases on the way that we didn’t expect. For example we had a company from the U.S. that’s selling hearing aids and they have an app which is a text-to-voice app. They were interested in extending this setup for someone who doesn’t want to wear the hearing aid all the time at home, to listen to stuff through their home entertainment system.”

That’s a relatively obscure use case, though. A far easier one to grasp is this: imagine, as an Android user, visiting a friend with an Apple TV unit and streaming content from your handset to that receiver. According to Bielau, that can be done.

What’s more – and this may give the firm an answer to Google’s promised open protocol for streaming from Android devices – Zapstreak is also gearing up to release SDKs for Windows Phone 8 and iOS by the end of this year. Apple’s T&Cs don’t forbid doing that, Bielau noted, but Zapstreak’s going to check with Apple before it deploys anyway – this should be amusing, as it would theoretically mean the ability to stream from an iOS device to any DLNA-equipped TV without the need for Apple TV.

Developers using the SDK will need to pay Zapstreak $29 a month per dev account, rather than per app. However, Bielau said his team is considering making this a per-OS payment, once the Windows Phone 8 and iOS SDKs are out. Still, it’s pretty cheap, and the company’s also offering a 30-day free trial for developers who sign up early.

Interestingly, Bielau suggested that Zapstreak may over time evolve into a consultancy of sorts. The company is picking up some valuable data as developers use its SDK, such as information about which handsets are being used to cast to which TV models. This, he reckons reasonably, is something the OEMs might want to know.

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“Since your devices are connected in the cloud, you can also do things like find the next video to watch from your tablet or browse around the web on your phone, all while the video plays on TV. You can even connect multiple devices to the TV to have your friends add to the playlist.”

YouTube has been second-screen functionality for YouTube apps on Google TV and other connected TV platforms for some time, but existing implementations required users to pair devices in order to send videos to the TV screen. That extra step is now gone, at least on Google TV. Android mobile phones and tablets will automatically discover any Google TV device within the same network.

A Google spokesperson told me via email a few days ago that the company it wants to bring the same functionality to “other devices and TVs,” which could presumably mean that YouTube’s own iOS apps could offer similar features in the near future as well.

Google TV VP of Product Management Mario Queiroz first told GigaOM this summer about efforts to simplify device pairing, and YouTube director of product management Shiva Rajaraman said during our conversation at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference in September that YouTube’s goal was “a world where all devices communicate” like AirPlay.

Check out my entire interview with Rajaraman below:

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Here are some of the highlights of the update for second- and third-generation Apple TVs:

• Shared Photo Streams — a new feature of iOS 6 — lets users share photos and albums from their device and invite others to comment on them
• Airplay-enabled speakers and other devices can now play audio from Apple TV
• Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Easy iTunes account switching
• When viewing movie trailers you can see local theater showtimes (U.S. only)
• Ability to reorder onscreen icons

It’s nice that Apple is bringing a brand new feature of iOS 6 like Shared Photo Streams to Apple TV so soon after it launched last Wednesday. As has been the case throughout this year, it’s getting harder and harder to convincingly label the Apple TV a hobby.

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Called Android HiFi, the free software uses Apple’s AirPlay technology to pipe audio files from an iOS device or a Mac that supports AirPlay to an Android device. I’m now using this software, for example, to stream songs, albums and playlists from my iTunes library to my new Nexus 7 tablet.

Granted the small speakers on my Android tablet and phones aren’t the best quality, but a pair of headphones solves that problem nicely. And there’s no need for me to sync and carry my iTunes library on my Android devices; at least not when using them on the same Wi-Fi network as my Mac.

It’s not perfect: The app is essentially a server app, so there’s not much to look at and it doesn’t support video. You can’t control music playback either. Still, it works as advertised and extends an iTunes library.

Last year, I looked a similar product, but it was in reverse. DoubleTwist added AirPlay support for Android phones and tablets to pipe audio and video to an Apple TV. I still use DoubleTwist for that purpose and now I’m adding Android HiFi to my bag of streaming media tools as well. It should come in handy to listen to my iTunes music while surfing the web, reading e-books or using other Android apps.

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