Apple TV as a Remote Speaker
A nifty feature included in the Apple TV “Take 2″ software update is the ability to use your Apple TV as an AirTunes speaker. You can now select your Apple TV from the speaker selection drop-down in iTunes to play your music or radio stations through the device.
Just as with the Airport Express, Signal integrates seamlessly with this solution, allowing you to drive the music playing through the Apple TV from anywhere in the house. If you happen to have the TV on at the same time the Apple TV will display album art for the currently playing song too, making for a nice visual compliment to your music.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
YES! This is almost exactly what I wanted out of my appleTV! To be able to use my iPhone as a remote. Thanks to Signal, I have access to the music. Now if I could just use the iPhone’s keyboard to do Youtube searches and browse the menu’s of the AppleTV, I would be all set…
..This will do for now at least!!
February 15th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Any word on when Apple/iTunes API will enable ‘Remote Speaker Selection’ so we can use Signal to select a speaker?
February 15th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
I’ve given up on Apple providing a real API for this and went ahead and implemented work-around. It’s not pretty but it does work, and supports selection of both single and multiple speakers. There is a little bit of work left to do on the Windows version, but since I know there are a lot of users eagerly awaiting this feature the Mac version of 1.1 will be going out next week one way or another.
February 16th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Great, thank you!
I’m on Windows, so I guess I will have to wait a little longer, but that’s good news.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Please don’t forget about all the loyal Windows users have already bought Signal for the next release! Thank you and I can’t wait for 1.1 to be released.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Absolutely! I try to make every effort to release updates for both platforms at the same time so no one feels left out. I’m also happy to say that the main issue holding up the Windows release has been resolved so it looks like we’ll have a combined release after all!
February 23rd, 2008 at 2:15 am
I don’t own an apple tv, but this comment string is awesome news!
March 17th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Are there any planes to use Signal as TV Remote control as well ? How can I train Signal to become a universal Remote Controll ?
March 17th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Paul: Since the iPhone and iPod touch do not have an IR transmitter it’s not really possible to use these devices as a universal remote today. It’s possible that in the future Signal could communicate with an IR blaster, but I haven’t been a big believer in these devices since there’s rarely a good place to put them in most setups.
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:24 am
is there a chance that Signal can be run directly on the AppleTV? I’d love to see this tool to control my AppleTV without having my TV on *and* without having my Mac (and iTunes) on…???!
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Ralph: Direct Apple TV support is something I would really love to see added to the application, but unfortunately Apple has chosen to make the Apple TV a closed device so there is no way for Signal to talk to it today. If this ever changes in the future Signal will certainly be updated to support it.