Every once in a while, there is something new in technology that comes out and it is just magical. Remember when the AirPort first came out? I couldn’t wait to show friends who came to my house…“watch this, I’m surfing without wires!”
The latest magic that has entranced me is AirPlay. AirPlay is a feature in Mac OS 10.8 (Mountain Lion) that allows a Mac to wirelessly send a video signal to an Apple TV. When I saw this put to the test in our Manchester, NH store, I was blown away. “Do it again!” Completely across the room, I was able to display the demo screen top onto a giant TV. No wires, no hassle — it just worked.
I started to do some digging about AirPlay and found that magical though it is, not every Mac is capable of putting the magic to work. It turns out that AirPlay Mirroring will only work if you have an iMac, MacBook Air or Mac mini from mid-2011, or a MacBook Pro from early 2011, according to Cult of Mac.
Simplified, it turns out that AirPlay encoding (H.264) that needs to be done entirely on the GPU (graphical processor unit) without involving the CPU. The GPU that can handle the H.264 encoding wasn’t put into Macs until 2011.
Owners of pre-2011 Macs who want to use the AirPlay feature aren’t completely out of luck though. As Apple said years ago, “yeah, there’s an app for that.” AirParrot is an app that sends the H.264 encoding to the CPU. All that’s required is Snow Leopard or newer OS, a multi-core processor and for best performance a decent wireless router that supports 802.11n and of course, an Apple TV.
AirParrot has a limited trial available here if you want to check it out to see how it works. Be aware, this may make your Mac run hot as according to AirParrot’s developer, David Stanfill, “AirParrot uses a non-trivial amount of CPU, which can result in the fans kicking and the machine getting a little warm.”
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