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Comment by warmfuzzykitten | Hacker News Reader

"AirPlay also makes it easy to push pirated video available on the Web onto the television, which could lead some people to drop their cable subscriptions."

Really? AirPlay only works with Apple-approved apps. E.g., it doesn't work with HBO Go. Pirated videos, there's no app for that.

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> Pirated videos, there's no app for that.

Torrent -> HandBrake -> iTunes -> Apple TV

That process is beyond the understanding of most people. They just want to buy and click play.

Irrelevant. The point is that getting pirated video onto the Apple TV is at most one extra step. A lot of torrents are already mp4, in which case there is no extra step.

The subject was AirPlay, which is a specific technology that allows users to play video on their iPhone/iPad on their TV through AppleTV. Can you rip off a video into iTunes and make AppleTV play it over wi-fi, but it's not AirPlay.

AirPlay works with any video from the iPod/Music/Videos apps. One can import any video (including tormented TV shows) into iTunes and thus into these apps. It most certainly is AirPlay, although Apple would prefer people to just buy from their store.

Sorry, you're just wrong. The feature in iTunes that lets you stream your videos to an Apple TV is called AirPlay and uses the same protocol as iOS devices.

AirPlay actually has its origins in AirTunes, which was originally only accessible through iTunes. These days there are even third party senders and receivers for AirPlay, so in principal you can use AirPlay without actually using any first-party Apple software or hardware.

Well, darn, I guess I am. Sometimes I think I know something I don't. Thanks for the clarification, all of the commenters. Sorry for the noise.

As i386 said, I don't think Torrent -> HandBrake -> iTunes -> Apple TV is a path many Apple users will take. But I guess it's AirPlay. :)

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