Does anyone know if there is a way to stream music from www.pandora.com to my AppleTV? Ultimately, I want to be able to enjoy Pandora on my home theater system, which my Apple TV is attached to. Thanks in advance.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple TV and Pandora?
- Thread starter blackfx35
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Thanks, in a nutshell, what is Couchsurfer? Does it void the AppleTV warranty? Or prevent customer support on it? Thanks again.
Couchsurfer would require you to hack the Apple TV. What I do is stream from my Macbook to the ATV. I use a program called Airfoil. It streams any audio you have on your mac to Airtunes. It's available for Windows also but I have no experience with that. Great program. I do believe you can demo it, with limitations of course.
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/
Thanks, seems to be working wonderfully (I bought the program). The only negative I see, is that my TV has to be turned on. This probably isn't a negative to the Airfoil program, rather, the result of using HDMI cables to connect AppleTV to my receiver (I understand with HDMI there has to be a monitor turned on for the Audio/Video signal to go through). Anyhow, not the end of the world, I can just show a slideshow of my 8 week old daughter on the monitor. Thanks again.
Have you tried turning off the TV? My receiver is component only and my TV is HDMI. Is it only the HDMI monitor out to the TV and the ATV into the receiver?
If that's true, that's a big downer for such spendy equipment. I was just using pandora last night over the ATV with guests over and the TV off. I'd hate to be locked into that. But at least you have a nice slideshow. Enjoy!
I am running HDMI from ATV to my receiver, and then HDMI from receiver to my TV...I guess I could use component from ATV to my receiver, and that would allow me to turn off my TV (I suspect!?!?). But not sure if I would lose much quality in audio or video... thoughts?
I really don't think the quality would suffer. I still have my HD DVD over the Xbox 360 and it looks fantastic. Of course one cable is a thing of beauty. So if you HDMI out can convert the AV and the TV could then be turned off, it's worth a try. Especially if you have those cables lying around.
Also, did you attempt to listen to audio with the TV off yet? Your statement before said "From what you heard the TV needs to be on." I was just dying to know the answer to that. It will help with my buying decision when I upgrade from my Sony receiver.
I did try with my tv turned off....it "freaked out" my appleTV, which went into a set up mode...I had to select "test", "restart" or "restore factory settings". I selected restart, and everything was fine. I am assuming this was a result of the appleTV not being able to send a signal with the TV turned off. Seems a bit strange to me, but that is what happened...
Yikes! That is strange. Something I will look at when I go all HDMI. Thanks for the info.
I use HDMI into DVI for my TV for the video and I use the optical audio into my receiver. I turn off my TV regularly after picking a playlist and aTV handles it fine. I've never heard such a problem and somebody must have tried an HDMI only connection for the video. I wonder what went wrong.
I have a hacked ATV w/ Couchsurfer but haven't had any luck getting Flash installed and so I can't run Pandora directly.
Instead I'm using Airfoil to stream Pandora to the ATVs (2) and use a Remote Deskstop app named RemoteTap to control the Mac Mini source from an iPhone. It all works very well.
I'm still on Airfoil. Still loving it. My new linksys router is causing dropouts but I'll get that fixed soon enough.
Add Boxee to your Apple TV
You can use the following instructions to gracefully hack your Apple TV to add the Boxee application that supports Pandora. Worked great for me. http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/
You can use the following instructions to gracefully hack your Apple TV to add the Boxee application that supports Pandora. Worked great for me. http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/
You can do it with CouchSurfer or Firefox on ATV as well. You just have to manually install the Flash Player plugins yourself and get them working. Takes some working knowledge of OSX commands. Boxee is an easier route and you gain a lot more from that software as well.
Audio for appleTV
I use the optical audio output to go from applteTV to receiver and then HDMI to go from AppleTV to TV and this solves the whole leaving the tv on problem. I dont see any problems with audio and video not syncing either when I do have the tv on.
I use the optical audio output to go from applteTV to receiver and then HDMI to go from AppleTV to TV and this solves the whole leaving the tv on problem. I dont see any problems with audio and video not syncing either when I do have the tv on.
Just get the app Muse from the Mac App Store. Pandora streaming, with AirPlay to both Mac and ATV simultaneously. Works fine.