Posts from Airplay

Bluetooth Update

About a month ago I posted about Bluetooth vs Airplay and mentioned in the post that I had purchased a Logitech Bluetooth Wireless Speaker Adapter for my home music system. I thought I'd give everyone an update about how that worked out.

Bottom line. It's fucking fantastic. I can do in my home what I do in my car. I've got a half dozen music apps on my phone (soundcloud, turntable, exfm, rdio, youtube, etc) and when I'm in my car, I can play music from any of them via bluetooth to the car audio system. It's the way we roll in our car, and not just me, but everyone in the family.

Now we can do the same in our home. I think my phone has officially become my turntable. I love it.

Here's what it looks like. It's the size of a hockey puck:

Logitech adapter
Here's what the backside looks like:

Logitech adapter back
I got some super high end RCA cables and went right into the line-in port on one of my Sonos zones. Now we can play music from our phones everywhere and anywhere in our house. It's a game changer.

Here are the negatives. First, I could only make it pair with one device. So I paired it with my phone. But I'd also like to pair it with the Gotham Gal's phone, and my children's phones. And also the Nexus 7 that sits in the family room. Apparently it is possible to pair with multiple devices but I couldn't figure it out.

Also, bluetooth has limited range so the phone has to be in the same room as the Logitech Adapter to play music. When you have Sonos zones all around the house and are used to controlling it on your phone all over the house, that is limiting too.

But I'll take those limitations for what this thing gives me which is a seamless experience from home to car and back. It's $70, so not cheap. And I had to wait a few weeks because it was back ordered. But if you want to give it a try, here's the link to Amazon.  I hope you like it as much as I do.

#mobile#Music

HBO No Go

I put the awesome HBO GO app on the family's iPad yesterday and tried to Airplay into our family room TV. I got audio on the TV but not video. I thought I was doing something wrong. So I rebooted everything and tried again. Same thing.

So I did a web search on the topic to see what was going on. Turns out HBO GO has disabled the video on Airplay but not the audio. That's right. They disabled the video but include an Airplay button in the app.

What kind of decision is that? If you don't want folks Airplaying the video from the iPad to the TV, don't put an Airplay button in your app. I can't imagine who would want to airplay the audio but not the video. That's messed up.

In truth, the whole thing is messed up. HBO GO requires a cable account to use the service. I have a cable set top box connected to the TV I tried to Airplay to. I just prefer the navigation on the HBO GO app and its way easier to use than the set top box. Allowing me to Airplay HBO GO from my iPad to my TV isn't going to make me cancel my cable subscription because I can't get HBO GO without one.

So they break the product instead. It's nuts. But I see big media doing this kind of thing all the time. And I just don't get it.

#mobile#Television

Bluetooth vs Airplay

I've written a fair bit about how we are using technologies like Bluetooth and Airplay in our homes and cars to connect our tablets and phones to our cars and home entertainment systems.

I've thought Airplay was the winning model because Apple is pushing it hard and integrating it into their product line across the board. Plus Airplay supports higher bandwidth applications like video and covers greater distances.

But an experience I had this week makes me take pause on that assumption. Our newest car has excellent bluetooth audio capabilities. Everyone's phones are paired to it and anytime anyone wants to take control of the car audio with their phone (iPhone or Android), they can play any audio app they want on their phone and the music plays in our car. This is true of most of the cars coming off the factory floors these days.

My son is particularly fond of taking control of the audio in the car and DJing. Yesterday he asked me why he couldn't do the same thing with our home entertainment system, which is built on Sonos. We have an airport express in the line-in on the Sonos and we can Airplay from iTunes. But that doesn't support Android phones and not all third party mobile apps support Airplay. Airplay is not ubiquitous in the way that Bluetooth is.

So I just bought this logitech bluetooth audio adapter and am going to swap out the airport express for this bluetooth adapter and see how my family reacts to that. I am betting that by replicating the experience they have in the car in our home, they will take control of our home music system with their phones in the same way they do in our car.

This shows the power of an open protocol like Bluetooth vs a proprietary protocol like Airplay. Airplay is a superior technology but it's lack of ubiquity may mean that it doesn't win the market in the end. We will see.

#mobile#Music#Web/Tech