What is the difference between apple tv and airplay

This TV content is always ad-free, and on-demand. Apple is spending several billion dollars a year on original TV programming using top entertainment-industry talent, along with television and movie rights to top books. The Apple TV 4K box still offers additional capabilities though. You have on-board storage for your downloaded apps and purchased content.

It also comes with a Bluetooth 4. If this doesn't sound like you, you should explore more affordable options—start with our round-up of the best streaming devices you can buy. Whatever you do, just don't assume that AirPlay is an air-tight replacement for the Apple TV streaming box—it's a bit more complicated than that.

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Money All Money Credit Cards. Accessibility All Accessibility. Written by Michael Desjardin. Related content feature This new streaming box does something you wish your Apple TV did.

AirPlay will stream content on your TV from connected devices, but it won't offer access to libraries of content and apps on its own. Up next. Streaming What is Xfinity Flex? A guide to the 4K streaming box Read more. Try our newsletter. You could use it to call up a song on your iPhone and play it in multiple rooms simultaneously, or pick and choose which AirPlay speaker to stream to.

Yep, AirPlay can finally party. In addition, with iOS AirPlay 2 is backward-compatible and works the same way as the original: Hit the AirPlay icon on your phone, iPad or Mac to play your content on available speakers or video devices. The main difference is that older AirPlay devices won't be included in multiroom groups. There are two main icons for AirPlay and will vary according to which app you're using: the video icon a TV with an Arrow , and audio radiating circles.

Pressing either of these will bring up a list of devices on your network which you can then stream to. AirPlay 2 unlocked several features of the speaker, including multiroom and stereo pairing the ability to use separate HomePods as left and right speakers.

AirPlay 2 also allows you to ask Siri, Apple's voice assistant on the speaker and other devices, to play music in a particular room or throughout the house. More recently Apple added the ability for multiple people to share control of a music queue. This means that everyone can be the DJ at your next house party provided everyone has their own Apple Music subscription first.

Spotify can also do this: It's called Group Session but it doesn't require the use of AirPlay, and you can be in different countries. The latest version of iOS 15 includes both multiroom capabilities and HomePod stereo pairing.