me too :)
Yes please add this to Plex. Priority 1. 
I hope there is no Linux needed which would make it pointless.
I know how pointless “ME TOO” posts are… but seriously, ME TOO.
The main use case I see for being able to AirPlay to Plex from an iOS device is for the future when AirPlay is more widely supported across the iOS platform. Steve has already as much as said that App Store apps, Safari videos, etc will be able to AirPlay in the future. I would love to find a video in a blog I’m looking at on my iPad and throw it instantly up on the TV. And I can’t even imagine the kinds of neat stuff other apps might do with AirPlay.
My wish list about AirPlay on Plex :
- PMS to be able to send a stream to an AppleTV using AirPlay protocol (selection of the movie/TV show on Plex for iOS then you choose the AppleTV as receiver). In this case, you can expect a 720p or 1080p stream at 5mbps entirely controlled by Plex for iOS (transcoding at 1080p and 5mbps is already working from the PMS to an iPad on the same network with Klexi). The good news is that there is no hack that have to be done on AppleTV or iPhone.
- Plex Client to be able to receive a stream from iTunes or an iPad/iPhone using AirPlay (Plex recognized as an AirPlay device). Again no jailbreak needed on iPhone.
All are technically feasible.
For the first point, you have some explanation how to do it here with ffmpeg : http://www.tuaw.com/...r-video-server/
For the second point, it already works on XBMC so why not on Plex : http://www.engadget…ows-next-video/
If the developers of Plex can implement both, you can expect to see the news all around the world. Both Plex and Apple will benefit on this (more sales of AppleTV).
This functionalities are really essential for the future of Plex because users won’t have to buy an LG device or a MacMini to watch their content on the TV, just an AppleTV at 99 bucks ! This is a lot cheaper than a Boxee Box !
+1.000.000
This is EXACTLY what I'm hoping for! This would be the ultimate media center setup, IMHO! :-D
Wouldn’t the Plex iOS app including this break rule No. 1 of the app store?
What’s rule no. 1 ?
Don’t mimic apple embedded software.
They haven’t released an SDK, so all of this work could be considered some form of reverse engineering. Apple controls the garden. Why let a 3rd party in to mimic what you sell as an apple only feature. And yes, it would still be apple hardware only, but we all know apple is both hardware and software.
Same reason I figure that Plex won’t be official on AppleTV until they release an SDK and open an app store for it.
Apple could say that it mimic the iTunes remote.app but it’s not an embedded software. It’s not sure that Apple will reject Plex for iOS because there will be nothing about AirPlay in it.
If Plex devs have any doubts about the rejection of Plex for iOS, they can “just” do the coding of the AirPlay streaming part from the PMS and let a dev create an iPhone app that will just be a remote app for PMS. I guess that the dev of Klexi will be happy to try
Anyway, it’s definitively a way to explore with a high priority.
EDIT : Seems that Apple is allowing some video AirPlay apps on the App Store like QuickPlay : http://itunes.apple.com/ch/app/quickplay-for-airplay-for/id409680873?mt=8 So we can also imagine that Plex for iOS could stream a movie to the AppleTV. But this is less sexy in my opinion.
not to nitpick, bit quickplay does the one thing that apple quickplay doesn’t, namely play video recorded on iphone to airplay enabled devices. It fills a niche for free, which could also be the workaround in play, that Apple left out.
Anyway, you never know until you try !
very very true. I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer. I just got the ATV 2 yesterday, so Im looking at how to best get plex on it. This would be ideal. I am not holding my breath though.
That’s a nice Christmas gift ! I don’t have one myself (no need, i use my Mini) but for sure I will buy one as soon as Plex becomes AirPlay friendly ! Like many people I am not interested to jailbreak the AppleTV to just run the alpha version of Plex.
If you have a good relationship with the Plex dev team and are convinced about the idea, you could try to convince them about going this way.
problem is this isnt the way i would do it. I would like to find a way to get perian or ffmpeg actually on atv2, then have pms simply give file locations and have a truelly native client on atv2. that’s why i got it, to see if i have the chops. i don’t have them now, and won’t for awhile. I might write an xbmc plugin for PMS since it seems higher priority over there. my main thing is UI though. I like it simple, but skinnable. If someone else can handle the actual video serving, let me have a whack at getting plex like interface on it.
Before starting to do this, you have to be sure that the A4 processor is able to read 1080p files with high bitrates (higher than 1080p at 5mbps, the maximum I saw running well with Klexi). If not, your project is useless. I sold the first ATV due to the low specs.
All of this is moot though because before too long they will come out with an app store. It makes too much sense not to. At that point come out with a native skinnable plexapp and big daddy is sassified.
There are plenty of blog posts out there stating that Jobs has “confirmed” Airplay will be extended to Safari and 3rd party apps “in 2011.” Take it for what its worth, but things will probably get better this year. It will probably do away with the need for the Plex plugin on the ATV and/or Jailbreaking. However, to simply stream your Plex library without having it update watched status, resume status and all that … well, there are ways to do that now, without using Plex. So personally Airplay without all the functionality of Plex across the household makes it less appealing to me. That kind of full functionality will require some major coding it would seem to me.
Its also important to note that nobody know if this means ALL 3rd party apps, or just ones that use Apples Video Player implementation (which Plex does NOT) … for instance, even jailbroken devices with AllPlay enabled won’t Airplay Netflix or VLC since they use their own video implementation … so its a bit of a puzzle at the moment.
I got lucky and have an early ATV2 which is still on the original firmware running the Plex client, and to be honest I don’t even use it that much because of the same reasons … without it updating the library status for my other machines, its just kind of a toy at the moment.
Anyhow I’m sure something will come together one way or another. Keep your chins up! :lol:
I think this should be relatively simple to do, without jailbreaking or violating any terms of use on the apple side. The airflick app allows you to stream web videos and files wirelessly to the apple tv over the airplay protocols (http://www.tuaw.com/2010/12/20/airflick-turns-macintosh-into-an-airplay-data-server/). I downloaded the ios plex app onto my ipod, and I am very impressed with the quality, and my question is:
Is there a way to know the url or stream location for a given file when streaming to the ios app. I wouldn’t mind having to have the computer transcode the internet videos to apple friendly formats for the ios app, and then sending that to the appletv using the stream url and the airflick app. Just knowing where the transcoded stream is, should be enough to sling it to the apple tv, and it would save all the apple developer restrictions. Thanks.
Just to try to get this back on track a little, it seems like there are two ideas getting conflated here…
- Allowing the Plex client running on OS X to be an available Airplay target, just like an Apple TV (2nd Gen) – in other words, being able to use Airplay-enabled IOS apps (like Youtube currently) to play to the Plex OS X client as if it was an Apple TV.
- Enabling the Plex IOS app to send Airplay to devices like Apple TV.
These are both great ideas, but since there is already a thread about item 2 in the Plex IOS app section, maybe we ought to keep this thread focused where it started, on item one, so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.
Hopefully item one is also a little more likely in the short term, since it doesn’t raise any issues of (IOS) App Store approval for using unpublished API calls (although I suppose there could eventually be Mac App Store issues to contend with).
You forgot to mentioned the third idea which is the most useful in my point of view :
3) Ability of the PMS to transcode and send the stream to an Apple TV using the AirPlay standard (AppleTV is not jailbreaked). The idea is to select the movie using Plex for iOS but instead of choosing to play it on the device or on a Plex client we could select an AppleTV in the network. There is two possibilities to achieve this. The first one, the easiest probably, is to use AirFlick which will receive the url address of the stream and send it to the AppleTV. The second one consist to build the abilities of AirFlick in the PMS code. Then we can imagine that we could control the movie through Plex for iOS that will transmit the orders to the PMS (pause, rewind, fast forward and stop).
This idea is great because everyone will be able to use an AppleTV at 99 bucks to watch all the contents of the PMS using an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch without having to jailbreak. In term of quality, the PMS is already able to transcode any HD movies, even a uncompressed bluray, at a bitrate of 5mbps in 1080p (tested with Klexi on an iPad and an iMac Core i7). So we will have great quality and comfort without having to buy a MacMini.
I hope people here will support the idea !
