Streaming Music with Apple Airport

[Youthman]

I recently purchased an Apple TV for the HT room. I love Airplay which allows me to view photos, videos, and access my entire iTunes account and send it through the HT. Now I want to extend the audio capabilities to my 2ch setup in the living room.

My dilemma is I do not have an Ethernet Wall Plate in the living room. From what I can see, the Apple Airport needs a Cat5 connection for it to work. I also see an Apple Airport Base Station that adds Wifi capability but it seems that might require a Cat5 cable as well.

How could I add Airplay capability to the 2ch setup? Is there a way to do it without having a Cat5 connection? Can it be done wirelessly?

One option might be to purchase a 3rd Wireless Router and install it in the living room. Then I could run a Cat5 cable from it into the Airport Express and I would be good to go. I'm just trying to see if I can do it without adding another router to the mix.

[Youthman]

I just watched this

and it appears that you do not need to connect the Airport Express to an Ethernet Cable. Whoohoo! Looks like it's exactly what I'm looking for.

[tigerwoodKhorns]

How do you like the apple TV?

I really do nto want to go down the apple road but I do need a solution for my whole house.

[Youthman]

How do you like the apple TV?

I actually really like it a lot. It has a lot of channels (ex. Netflix, Youtube, Basketball, News etc) but I don't really use it for that. The main reason I bought it was I wanted to be able to watch "The Hero" TV Series that I purchased on iTunes on my 103" screen instead of watching it on the iPad.

Since then, we just came back from Summer Camp with our youth in North Carolina. It was cool to watch with the family, photos and video that I had taken with my iPhone, on the big screen. []

My favorite feature is the ability to play music from my iPhone or iPad wirelessly through the HT system. I can now be anywhere in the house and change songs, play Pandora etc. That's VERY COOL to me.

I really do nto want to go down the apple road but I do need a solution for my whole house.

Why is that? I used to be Anti-Apple. I never had a reason why, I guess I just have never been one to jump on any bandwagon. When kids were wearing Nike, I chose Reebox just to be different. I had no desire to be like everyone else.

My first real intro into the world of Mac was a few years ago. We had a family in our church that donated some money for us to upgrade our projector, worship software and computer. I did a lot of research and ended up buying an iMac. I began to quickly see why many people like Macs.

After that, I was talking to a friend and told him my smartphone was junk and I really needed to look at getting a new one. He said he had an iPhone 4s with a backup battery case. I absolutely love the iPhone. So much, I ended up buying an iPad 2 on Craigslist for $250.

My latest purchase was the Apple TV.

I guess the one thing that I really appreciate about Apple products is that they play sooooo well with each other.

Back to your statement, "I do need a solution for my whole house", what exactly are you wanting to do? Music through the house? Video?

[McMiRA]

I made the jump to apple a couple years ago, i wanted nothing to do with them, but now i couldnt be happier myself. besides the usual macbooks, iphones, and ipads I have 3 of the airport expresses( one being the latest version), 2 apple tv3s, AirPort Extreme and a timecapsile.. i can tell you air play is awesome.airports expresses can be ran both hard wired and wireless. You can use them to create AirPrint hubs for printers, creat a network, extend a network, and of course, airplay. What most people don't realize is that apple products have a toslink stuffed inside them so you can run optical out. I have the AirPort Extreme time capsule installed at my home office, and an airport express extending the network on the opposite end of the house in the garage. It runs audio to my garage receiver. My network covers my entire yard and then some. They have one of the most powerful wifi routers on the market. I have another air port express that sits in the home office and is connected to a vintage receiver. Apple TV n the main av rack and the bedroom and 2 receivers that have airplay built in. The last airport express and AirPort Extreme live at the office. My klipsch promedia 2.1 are ran straight to the express. Makes it easy to run audio from MacBook, iPhone or ipad without having to swap cables around. You are 100% right about it being nice to have products that work so well together, I could never get windows devices to play like this without a fit, and then it was only briefly they worked.. I can walk around the house or work and play music everywhere. Add iTunes and the remote app on a phone and its even better. If that's not enough look for the airfoil app for Mac or pc and you can play any audio off your computer to one or all of the devices at once. Even feed audio backwards to an ipad. On of my favorite uses is using the directv app to watch a game on the ipad while cooking on the grill and running the audio through the outside speakers while the woman watches something else inside.

[Youthman]

Wow McMIRA. Sounds like you have a sweet whole house audio setup there

[tigerwoodKhorns]

Thanks for the responses.

I am trying to avoid Mac because once you buy one of their products, everything that you buy is apple to be compatable and it wants to sell you apple products.

[Thaddeus Smith]

I've never understood anti-Apple sentiments. The hardware quality is superb and OS revisions don't immediately make your computer obsolete. I'm still rocking my 2009 MBP and aside from short battery life I have absolutely no performance degradation across four new OS releases. You don't have to go all Apple, all the time in order to have a cohesive computing environment. It's relatively easy to integrate Apple, Windows, and Android devices with success. Going all Apple simply makes it stupid easy.

[Youthman]

I am trying to avoid Mac because once you buy one of their products, everything that you buy is apple to be compatable and it wants to sell you apple products.

I used to feel the same way myself until I began buying Apple products. I now buy them because I want to, not because I have to. They work fine by themselves, but they play VERY well with each other.

[RT FAN]

I recently drank the "Apple Kool-Aid" by buying an IMAC to replace my Dell pc which crapped out. I have to say I am very impressed with the machine, the design, ergonomics & performance are very impressive. I just started the lengthy process of downloading my cd collection into Apple Lossless, replacing my old Itunes library of MP3's. I have signed up for the Icoud service which will allow me to upload my entire collection and be able to play it off an Ipad or our Iphones out at our weekend house. My intention is to buy an Integrated Amp with both Bluetooth capabilities & Optical inputs so I can either Stream my music or directly plug a device into the Amp. The Amp I am looking at also has a USB input, for guests who wish to listen to their music on their Ipods. Any of these inputs would use the built in DAC in the amp bypassing the ones in the MP3, etc players.

[RRFL]

In Australia, it's buy 1 pay double with Apple. they charge double the price for music on itunes as you do in US. They the say it's due to customs and handling etc. But get real it's on line who has to handle the electrons.

My antique early 2011 Google nexus s Phone can play all the wav files stored on it via WiFi into my circa 1975 Stereo which is now called a 2 channel. My Msi netbook does the same.

So if all my non Apple friends play all the movies or internet "whatever" through their HD TV's in 3D and have been doing that for ages, why do you need "the new" Apple TV other than the Apple marketing told you you need to buy it and pay double.

[McMiRA]

Wow McMIRA. Sounds like you have a sweet whole house audio setup there

we enjoy it, but it baffles friends when they come over with all the devices that control everything in the house. I tell them just to shoot their music over to the tv or the garage and they pull up the list for airplay and usually say something like holy $>|>£\. I took an Apple TV over to a friends house Saturday to help him get his windows audio onto his Bose system without running wires. Downloaded airfoil and the apple remote app, and now he's hooked. He went into his photo editor and made some football schedules and cookout menus to scroll on the tv during football season before the games. Now hes wanting a floating waterproof case for his iphone for the pool. I don't think I'm getting that Apple TV back.

[RRFL]

Wow McMIRA. Sounds like you have a sweet whole house audio setup there

we enjoy it, but it baffles friends when they come over with all the devices that control everything in the house. I tell them just to shoot their music over to the tv or the garage and they pull up the list for airplay and usually say something like holy $>|>£\. I took an Apple TV over to a friends house Saturday to help him get his windows audio onto his Bose system without running wires. Downloaded airfoil and the apple remote app, and now he's hooked. He went into his photo editor and made some football schedules and cookout menus to scroll on the tv during football season before the games. Now hes wanting a floating waterproof case for his iphone for the pool. I don't think I'm getting that Apple TV back.

That's a great idea having a drive in theatre in your garage, just drive in roll back the top. I would be a great chick magnet if you also had a starlight roof in the garage and also a candy bar or a dinner.

[McMiRA]

We just have audio out there right now, but when the theatre room gets a new projector I planned to move the old one to the garage. Wasn't really for the drive in feel. For some reason our neighborhood has a thing with entertaining in the driveways, weekends look like a block party during football season.

[RRFL]

We just have audio out there right now, but when the theatre room gets a new projector I planned to move the old one to the garage. Wasn't really for the drive in feel. For some reason our neighborhood has a thing with entertaining in the driveways, weekends look like a block party during football season.

Then when you spill into the roadway and all the driveways blend into one, that's something. On Australia Day "The Aussie Ute" (pickup) can become a spa pool with some heavy duty plastic sheeting in the back. Since no one can drive anywhere it makes it useful.