AirPlay is coming to LG smart hotel TVs later this year

Photo: LG

LG Electronics announced it would be among the first TV makers to support Apple's AirPlay expansion, allowing Apple users to stream their personal media to hotel room TVs easily. LG said it would launch LG Pro:Centric Smart Hotel TVs with built-in AirPlay technology later this year.

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macOS Monterey will bring Apple Fitness+ to the Mac via AirPlay

Strangely enough, Apple Fitness+ hasn't been available on the Mac. Until now, that is. With macOS Monterey, Mac machines can support content via AirPlay from Apple devices like the iPhone or iPad, including Apple Fitness+ videos. So, now you can start a workout from your mobile device and then wireless stream the video to your laptop. A big drawback is you don't have access to on-screen metrics like heart rate and calories burned. You can only see this data on your Apple Watch.

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Netflix’s iOS app no longer supports AirPlay, cites ‘technical limitations’

It seems the Netflix app for iOS has lost support for Apple AirPlay. According to an updated support document on Netflix’s site, this is due to “technical limitations.” What these limitations are, we can’t say. MacRumors tested out the feature and have found that they can’t get Netflix to play using the feature. It’s been available on the service since 2013, and it’s usually worked until this week. It shouldn’t affect much of your use with Netflix apps available on Apple TV, consoles, smart TVs, iOS, and the like. But now if you use AirPlay, you’re going to have to try out alternatives.

CES 2019: VLC plans to add AirPlay support

Janko Roettgers/Variety

We concentrate a lot on hardware with our CES coverage but there’s been a lot of movement in the software space. And Apple has a way of being at the show without actually being there. This time we get an update from open-source video player VLC. Jean-Baptiste Kempf, one of the app’s lead developers, told Variety that it plans to bring AirPlay support from Android or iPhone to the Apple TV. It should be coming to the main VLC app in “about a month” for free. The video app closes in out its three billion download mark and has been celebrating the news at its booth in CES.

The other feature VLC was demoing at CES included better support for virtual reality, making it possible to watch 2D movies in a virtual theater environment within VR headsets. The developers managed to reverse-engineer most VR headsets to natively support VR video through the main VLC app without needing to add “hundreds of megabytes” of code to VLC. The demo was just based on around 1MB of additional code.