iPhone's New AirPlay Feature for Hotel Room TVs Begins Rolling Out

[I7guy]

Why is the pairing done with a QR code. does the EU have to bitch slap Tim to let devs pair with NFC?

Tim doesn’t have to worry. Not available in the EU.

 

[Tres]

I've never seen Airplay work well on a third-party device. It's available on my high-end LG TV but barely works (slow, drops out) and I've seen the same thing on Samsung TVs. It works fine with Apple TVs that are on the same network as those TVs, though.

Now imagine that but over a congested hotel network.

 

[mattoruu]

Why is the pairing done with a QR code. does the EU have to bitch slap Tim to let devs pair with NFC?

Don’t get me wrong, I would love for NFC to be opened-up for any and everything on the iPhone. But why would NFC (in this specific situation) be better than a QR code?

A quick scan of a QR code seems like the far superior method. Any TV can display a QR code (that can be scanned basically across the room). But… are there any TVs that have NFC built-in?

(Doing a quick search as I’m typing.)

Ah! There are some TVs that come with remotes that have NFC built-in. I learned something new today. I had no idea. Well, in that case maybe NFC is a good method after all.

(I’m going to post this with the first part of my reply still there. I’m probably not the only one completely unaware of NFC on TVs, lol.)

 

[svish]

About time. Not happy with the rollout months later after it was announced.

 

[steve09090]

USB C to HDMI cable does it for me.

 

[macfacts]

Don’t get me wrong, I would love for NFC to be opened-up for any and everything on the iPhone. But why would NFC (in this specific situation) be better than a QR code?

A quick scan of a QR code seems like the far superior method. Any TV can display a QR code (that can be scanned basically across the room). But… are there any TVs that have NFC built-in?

(Doing a quick search as I’m typing.)

Ah! There are some TVs that come with remotes that have NFC built-in. I learned something new today. I had no idea. Well, in that case maybe NFC is a good method after all.

(I’m going to post this with the first part of my reply still there. I’m probably not the only one completely unaware of NFC on TVs, lol.)

There are NFC stickers the hotels can buy and program. When Walmart has QR code payment system, tons of iPhone users bitch and moan.

 

[grovian]

I've never seen Airplay work well on a third-party device. It's available on my high-end LG TV but barely works (slow, drops out) and I've seen the same thing on Samsung TVs. It works fine with Apple TVs that are on the same network as those TVs, though.

Now imagine that but over a congested hotel network.

Works just fine on Xiaomi TVs. Here in a china it is pretty common to have one of those.

 

[Hank001]

I've never seen Airplay work well on a third-party device. It's available on my high-end LG TV but barely works (slow, drops out) and I've seen the same thing on Samsung TVs. It works fine with Apple TVs that are on the same network as those TVs, though.

Now imagine that but over a congested hotel network.

In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, "What could possibly go wrong?"

 

[bodhisattva]

Really looking froward to this!

 

[Dreadnought]

And Netflix still doesn’t support this…

 

[Johnstrass2]

This is a promising new technology, and exciting to see what is coming!!

Why doesn't apple just make a HDMI dongle to RECEIVE air play from iOS

 

[mickobizzle]

i'm an IHG guy. quite a bit of tracking and fingerprinting on their wifi.
i just take my hotspot enabled iphone, my appleTV and an HDMI cable.

 

[sigurros]

This is SO needed. While staying at a Hilton recently, my kids wanted to stream a movie, but couldn't. I wanted to show videos I recorded on the TV, but couldn't. It felt like I was back in the VHS era!!!

 

[MacKey76]

I fully understand your concern about public wifi.

I am interested in learning more. Trying to understand what you mean by direct connection to the tv, as in a HDMI cable? That already works, assuming you can get access to a TV's HDMI ports. If you mean a direct wifi connection to the TV, doesn't that require the TV to support WIFI (not all due, most have direct wired connections). And if it did have WIFI, doesn't that require it too cooperate in making a direct connection, which is hard to imagine.

The other point is, Apple requires WIFI for DRM, to establish you 'own' a movie on your phone that you are trying to view. This has alway been the case. I dont know if they can also validate ownership via a phone's native signal, but that wouldn't work for iPads without a phone plan. Could you elaborate on how this might work?

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. By direct I was thinking more like the peer-to-peer WiFi so you know there is no other devices listening in and end-to-end encryption, or even Bluetooth, but I know that has very limited bandwidth.

You're still open to the TV being vulnerable and I very much doubt any hotel will ever update the firmware on their TVs, but maybe they have an auto-update mechanism, but it's still a gamble I wouldn't take with my devices.

If I was travelling for an extended period and this feature was a deal breaker for me, I'd probably just take an old Apple TV device with me and connect it to the TV with HDMI and put that and my phone on my MiFi or hotspot. A much bigger hassle, but secure and all in my control.