4 ms·

No, because third party alternatives like AirParrot or Beamer work just as well and without the hardware restriction.

by brymaster 13y ago

comex 13y ago
They may work, but they don't work just as well.
- brymaster 13y ago
  Oh yes, you're right. They don't work just as well, they work better. AirParrot has additional features like sending only one specific application window to the ATV and control over quality. Beamer lets you seamlessly stream any kind of movie format you want and also gives control over subtitles. Both work all the way back on 10.6. I don't suppose you could give me any advantages of Apple-branded AirPlay Mirroring huh?
  - parasubvert 13y ago
    This has been discussed before. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/mountain-lion-airplay-mirroring-v-airparrot-fight/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/mountain-lion-airplay-m... Tried Airparrot - quality was terrible in comparison.
    - brymaster 13y ago
      Year old review (software improves) and you may have missed this: http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-27-at-9.13.46-AM.png http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Scree...
      - parasubvert 13y ago
        Too much work for my mom, thanks.
        brymaster 13y ago
        I get the impression you've never actually used the software.
  - comex 13y ago
    The point of Quick Sync is to offload video encoding to specialized hardware, which reduces CPU usage. A quick Google search confirms that AirParrot uses a lot of CPU, which hurts the user experience. I won't opine on whether this is worth dropping the feature (and of course an application could be designed to use Quick Sync if available and fall back to the CPU otherwise; would be nice if OS X exposed this as a public API, although I think it's not hard to get at anyway), but there certainly is an advantage.
nsxwolf 13y ago
I think it is more that Apple didn't want to implement and maintain two different solutions for the same problem.

No, because third party alternatives like AirParrot or Beamer work just as well and without the hardware restriction.

comex 13y ago

They may work, but they don't work just as well.

brymaster 13y ago
Oh yes, you're right. They don't work just as well, they work better. AirParrot has additional features like sending only one specific application window to the ATV and control over quality. Beamer lets you seamlessly stream any kind of movie format you want and also gives control over subtitles. Both work all the way back on 10.6. I don't suppose you could give me any advantages of Apple-branded AirPlay Mirroring huh?
- parasubvert 13y ago
  This has been discussed before. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/mountain-lion-airplay-mirroring-v-airparrot-fight/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/mountain-lion-airplay-m... Tried Airparrot - quality was terrible in comparison.
  - brymaster 13y ago
    Year old review (software improves) and you may have missed this: http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-27-at-9.13.46-AM.png http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Scree...
    - parasubvert 13y ago
      Too much work for my mom, thanks.
      - brymaster 13y ago
        I get the impression you've never actually used the software.
- comex 13y ago
  The point of Quick Sync is to offload video encoding to specialized hardware, which reduces CPU usage. A quick Google search confirms that AirParrot uses a lot of CPU, which hurts the user experience. I won't opine on whether this is worth dropping the feature (and of course an application could be designed to use Quick Sync if available and fall back to the CPU otherwise; would be nice if OS X exposed this as a public API, although I think it's not hard to get at anyway), but there certainly is an advantage.

nsxwolf 13y ago

I think it is more that Apple didn't want to implement and maintain two different solutions for the same problem.