One of my favored features of Io 4.2 ( and by and by ) and thesecond - generation Apple TVis that if I ’ve taken photograph or video with my iPhone , I can use Apple ’s AirPlay technology to swarm those bits of media directly from my iPhone to the Apple telecasting — I do n’t have to first synchronize the media to iTunes or iPhoto . This gain it well-off to , for representative , show my female parent - in - law the video I took of my girl ’s first “ solo ” cycle ride at the park .
Notice I did n’t say “ quicklyshow . ” If you ’ve ever streamed iPhone - captured TV to an Apple television set using AirPlay , you know the process can be quite slow . ( If only there was a word of honor for “ as dull as you’re able to imagine while still really progressing . ” ) Video files are huge to begin with , the telecasting on your iPhone has n’t been compress , and wireless networks portray extra bandwidth challenge — the end result is that it can take five or ten minutes for the Apple TV to buffer a two - moment iPhone - shoot television . ( And the Apple TV decides on its own when it ’s received enough video to allow playback to get . )
As I discover over the weekend , when I attempted to show the aforementioned bike - ride video recording , this makes for a less - than - impressive demo . ( Cut to scene of me telling the family , “ Go ahead and do what you were doing ; I ’ll let you make love when it ’s ready . ” ) But what Ialsorealized this retiring weekend is that there ’s a way — with a few limitation — to “ queue up ” these videos for instant playback .
The latest Apple TV does n’t have a hard crusade , but it does have 8 GB of internal memory . Some of that retention is used to lay in the Apple TV ’s operating system and other software package , but a big clump of it is used tocachemedia — video recording , audio recording , or photos — for better operation . If you ’ve ever streamed a movie from your Mac or from Netflix , you ’ve seen the blue progress bar “ fill up ” as the Apple TV stores a chunk of that content ( a proficiency often calledbuffering ) . When you ’re watching the video , the Apple TV actually study the stored data , rather than the data streaming over the connection ; as stored data is used , it ’s discarded and interchange by new data . This is why you ( usually ) do n’t see stutters and freezes in streamed TV , even with a jerky web joining .
But this caching does n’t just pass with media stream over the Internet or from your Mac — it also bechance when streaming , say , video from an iPhone . And , in fact , that videostaysin the Apple TV ’s cache until the retentivity is need for something else .
Do you see where I ’m going here ? If you do , you ’re a step ahead of where I was on Monday evening . That ’s when my wife returned from a weekend trip , and I think she ’d enjoy follow the same cycle - ride videos I ’d showed her mom the day before . I warn her that it would take a while for the Apple TV to buffer enough of the first video to start learn it , so she went off to start unpacking . Yet when I pink the AirPlay push on my iPhone to come out streaming the first telecasting , it instantly started playing on the Apple television . As did the second . And the third .
Of naturally , the reason is that the Apple TV had cached the video recording the Nox before , and those television were still in the hoard . ( The following day I used the Apple TV to follow some streaming video recording from Netflix and the NBA channel . This evidently overwrote the video I ’d streamed from my iPhone , as the next metre I tried to watch them via AirPlay , I was back to slow - as - molasses buffering . )
The upshot is that if you ’ve got some iPhone- or iPad - hosted video you want to show to your kinsperson or ally using your Apple TV , you may deliver precious time — and fend off uncomfortable tech moments — by streaming that videobeforethe entire family foregather around the telecasting . When the metre comes to watch , the video will be quick to go .
The caveats ? Caching is obviously limited to the amount of free retentivity on the Apple TV , so you wo n’t be able-bodied to queue up an straight-out number of magazine , and lay away TV remains on the Apple TV only until something else involve that computer memory . Also , in my testing , it appears the Apple TV only keeps cached iPhone - streamed picture in storage if you let the video load totally . If I stopped AirPlay cyclosis before the Apple TV squirrel away the entire video recording , that television was re - pour from the beginning the next fourth dimension I set about to view it on the Apple TV .
But if you want the convenience of AirPlay streaming without the hold , this tip can come in ready to hand — particularly for those gather - the - family screening opportunities .
Dan Frakes is a Macworld senior editor program
