What is Reddit's opinion of
Beamer?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
34 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Instead of Airparrot, I use a program called Beamer.
Instead of mirroring your entire screen, it just sends the video file over (with audio) and it works much, much better.
I have been using it for about a year now on a 2009 MacBook Pro and it never lags.
If you own a Macbook download Beamer-app.
It costs $15 but is totally worth the money.
Beamer-app allows you to stream almost any type of file from your Macbook to your Apple TV, including MKV's and AVI's. Converting happens on the fly, so no need to do it yourself. Just open the file with Beamer and you're ready to go! No lag, great quality (HD), full subtitle support.
Look up the app "Beamer" http://beamer-app.com/
You can give it pretty much any video file and it will stream it to an Apple TV - super simple and works great. It does cost $7, but it was worth it to me; I've gotten a lot of use out of it.
> How does it compare to Beamer?
I think there are some differences. Most significant ones being that Airflow works on Windows too, supports both Apple TV and Chromecast and can do hardware accelerated transcoding. And is free.
I'd say your best bet would be to pickup an AppleTV for your TV and use AirPlay Mirroring or just directly AirPlay media using iTunes or an app like Beamer. If your TV is close to your network, you can hard wire the AppleTV for better performance (although Wi-Fi works just fine for me).
Thanks for the great list! Instead of AirVideo you may want to try Beamer It's a small Mac app that you can drop any video file (any format) in to and it'll stream directly to your Apple TV. It bypasses the whole having to airplay it from your iDevice. I use it all the time.
I don't think Perian works well on newer Mac OSes.
In your case, I would look into Beamer to airplay videos from your computer to an Apple TV. I use this app every day and it's a must-have.
You should try Beamer! It's a lot better than AirPlay if you want to stream a video from your Mac. I use it every single day and couldn't live without it. Bonus: you can use your Apple TV remote to pause, fast-forward or rewind the movie.
Mirroring actually sends the image of the whole screen, this is very taxing for your (WiFi?) bandwidth. If you want to stream videos, might I suggest something like http://beamer-app.com which only sends a specially encoded, compressed stream of the video to your Apple TV.
Instead of using Airplay Mirroring you should use a program called Beamer. I use it every day and have no problems. You simply drag and drop the movie on Beamer and it streams it to the AppleTV. There is a free trial available, just try it.
If you like to stream youtube videos to the AppleTV I advise you to install the ClickToFlash extension in Safari.
i do something similar to /u/sixpicas.
convert everything to .mp4 and import into iTunes. plays everything natively from the TV "computers" app.
otherwise, look into Beamer to stream individual movies to any AirPlay device. This involves some user interaction on the computer when it's movie time, as opposed to having everything pre-loaded and browsable on the TV
Are you using Airplay Mirroring? I find it useless for anything other that still images, it's pretty terrible for trying to watch a video on the TV. My ATV is connected through ethernet to my Airport Extreme and the Airport is about 10m away from the laptops which would be streaming to it, running throughput tests and backups to the Time Capsule shows that it is capable of putting through at least 15 MB/s but Airplay Mirroring still seems to be choppy and unreliable. From what I've googled it seems that Mirroring doesn't use any sort of buffer so it magnifies any sort of tiny "network hiccup".
If you have the videos on your macbook you can use an app like Beamer which uses normal Airplay which has a buffer to them to the Apple TV, but if they are live/streaming it's best to get a thunderbolt to HDMI adapter. These options not only remove the stuttering that Mirroring has but provide superior audio options.
You don't need to get an Apple branded adapter as any will do, I got this one and it works perfect, it even sends audio through the HDMI port to the TV.
Beamer. Stream any movie file from your Mac to Apple TV.
It's the best way to watch downloaded movies on Apple TV without having to go through iTunes or mirror my whole screen.
Make sure to check out beamer.. The little app will sling any video you have on your mac straight to your TV - HD, SD, high bit-rate, subtitles, no subtitles, multiple language tracks. Whatever you got, Beamer will play it back on your TV with 0 lag and full quality.
And you can have playback control through your AppleTV remote. Bet $15 I've ever spent.
Not unless you get some kind of remote control infrared relaying system. I haven't used one and I don't know what they're called but I've seen them in various tech shop catalogues. It's basically an infrared sensor that sends the signals wirelessly to a secondary device that simply replicates the same infrared signals.
However, there are other ways to do similar things "natively". For image slideshows, you can create albums in iCloud and browse those images directly on the Apple TV. You can create these albums either on an iOS device or in iPhoto on a Mac.
You can also stream any video from your Mac to your AppleTV using one of these Mac apps (perhaps others as well):
This way you can pause, fast forward, and rewind using your remote on your AppleTV while the video is actually being served from your Mac.
I use Beamer but Airparrot 2 seems to have a few more features. They're both $15 but they have trial versions so you can test them.
If they're videos on iTunes, then you should be able to shoot those directly to AirPlay. If they're videos you've downloaded, using Beamer (http://beamer-app.com) helps a ton. I don't know any free alternatives that will directly cast videos to ATV.
Beamer for your Mac will stream any video file to your Apple TV. But if you already have the functionality it's redundant.
No, for Europeans the Apple TV is really lack lustre. Here in Sweden we got Netflix at least, but Swedish Netflix is pretty poor compared to American from what I hear.
I like to watch youtube, and subscribe to a heap of channels that I watch daily. Unfortunately the Youtube app is quite poor so I prefer the player on my Samsung TV.
The Swedish Public Service channel has a pretty good app that I use quite a lot but that's not gonna help you ;)
The OS is in beta, don't expect it to work perfect.
I would recommend getting Beamer. It has a free trial, and is super cheap if you like it. The app lets you stream to any AppleTV, and does live conversions for video file format (like AVI or MKV).
have you tried beamer? it's what i use to stream my mkvs from my NAS. works within seconds for me, but i have a 2013 macbook air and wireless AC (latest/fastest spec) for my devices.
since you mentioned lag with both your powerbook and through xbmc, it makes me wonder if your int*RA*net bandwidth isn't the limiting factor.
Does the quality improve when taking the videos off the external HD?
If you are streaming through iTunes, keep in mind that iTunes needs to constantly access the file while streaming it.
Other suggestions:
- Plug the Apple TV in via Ethernet (if possible)
- Use an app like beamer to stream it instead
While I understand what you mean, it apparently doesn't "just work" because you have videos that you can't play.
I fought the idea of jailbreaking too, I wanted to trust the native experience supplied by all of the products. But I am telling you, do it, if nothing else for the ability to use XBMC and play content of nearly any type and codec from a shared drive on your local network. Not to mention the Hulu, Amazon Prime and Free Cable plugins that can be used with it.
EDIT: If you REALLY don't want to jailbreak, you can also use an app called Beamer(Mac Only) to stream videos from your computer to your Apple TV, no jailbreak required. There is a loss of video quality though.
Jailbreaking makes me uneasy, because I am update fiend and don't want to wait when a new iOS comes out. But I was getting annoyed that I couldn't watch avis, mkvs, flvs, etc. And then I found...
Drag and drop just about anything on it, and it plays on your Apple TV 2. Simple. Works. $7. Awesomeness.
Beamer App is adding Chromecast support in their next update. It's a very easy to use app if she doesn't like the complexity of Plex.
VLC is supposedly adding Chromecast support too, not sure when.
Airplay mirroring the desktop can have it's issues as some others have stated. That being said, there are apps like Beamer or a hand full of others I have seen pop up that allow you to stream (and transcode) video directly from the Mac using AirPlay. I've always had a very good experience with Beamer so I've never checked out any of the other apps on the market myself.
This came up somewhat recently and someone posted an app for Mac that does what the iPhone/iPad do - takes the video and sends only that to the ATV. Supposed to make it as smooth as it is on iPhone.
Edit - pretty sure this is it. Don't have a Mac myself though
I use beamer, which I find amazing!
You do have to bite the bullet a pay for a license (not a lot), but I think it's lifetime, I think they have a trial to try... But it plays any file I've tried, and is butter smooth. I love it.
I love my Apple TV. I combine it with Beemer (http://beamer-app.com) and it plays anything I throw at it. I have a dedicated server for British TV torrents, and the system works really well. My laptop is perpetually on the coffee table, and I cue up shows on the laptop and control them with the apple remote. Couldn't be better.
If I find something cool and want to show the wife, I just mirror my display onto the tv. Then go back to our regularly scheduled programming.
I had a boxee box before the Apple TV, and then I tried xbmc. Both sucked mightily in the user interface dept.
I don't understand the hate for the Apple TV. It doesn't do everything, but what it does, it does well.
Sure it can. (And I think there's no way to make it stream over the internet, is there?)
Make sure to use AirPlay or Beamer (which uses airplay) though, not things like streaming services (Netflix etc.).
The best way would be to have a Mac on the same network as the Apple TV. Use an app called Beamer on the Mac and just add the video to the playlist loads of times . The app will send it to the appletv with AirPlay. http://beamer-app.com/
Beamer (http://beamer-app.com) consists of 50% of my Apple TV usage and is excellent. Open it in your Mac and drag any video file (such as mkv files) into the icon and they will play on the Apple TV via AirPlay.
You have a few different options for streaming Plex to an Apple TV. All of which I have tried.
- Plex Connect is a sort of hackish way. I didn't personally have good luck with it, but many other did.
- Buy the App and use AirPlay to an Apple TV
- Buy the App and buy a Chromecast
- Stream the video from your computer through Airplay.
- If you have a Mac, a great program (that doesn't use Plex) is Beamer.
- If you have a recent Mac you can also just pull up the video (in plex or not) and AirPlay your entire desktop. Mavericks makes this pretty easy.
- If you don't have a recent Mac, there are 3rd party programs that can achieve the same thing over Airplay. There are Windows solutions for this too.
So far for me using the app on my tablet/phone with a chromecast works best in the higher quality. YMMV
Remember if you are going through Airplay you are dependent on the device. So pushing a 1080p signal through plex over wifi to an iPad 2 back over wifi to an Apple TV will NOT be 1080p quality by the time it gets to your screen.
edit: formatting
Tried the demo - worked pretty well.
Tested two different video files. Each one I had to restart because it didn't seem to connect and would return to the ATV homescreen.
Would love to see some more in browser controls (fast forward, reverse, pause).
I currently use Beamer to play my non-iTunes media and I've never had an issue with it.
However I really like the idea of using the mobile device to select a file to play.
Apple TV has HDMI and optical audio out and can run netflix easy, but only uses .mp4 video files unless you use something like Beamer (Thanks Lukejames!) to convert them for you. the straight HDMI out is nice and not converting the signal might be better for quality.
An older Mac Mini would need a DVI converter or something like that, but the new ones have HDMI out. They also support analog audio and are a computer, which means you're never going to have a hard time getting around it. But it will also cost at least $200 and probably $500 for a decent one, while apple tv is $99.
I'd just get a little PC [windows, apple or whatever] and make it a media center with wireless keyboard/mouse, but that's just me.
I believe you could. Since XBMC can read shared folders and drives, I don't see why you couldn't share a folder on your computer and have XBMC read from there.
EDIT: Someone posted this in the thread, thought it would interest you. No jailbreak required, apparently. Beamer App.