T-Mobile BINGE ON and AirPlay

[mconk]

New T-Mobile subscriber here.

Last night my Verizon FiOS connection went out (a node in the area apparently went down) so I fired up personal hotspot on my iPhone, and connected my Apple TV to the phones hotspot.

From there, I was able to AirPlay and stream content directly from the iPhone HBO GO app. On 9.3b2, you're also finally able to exit the app you're AirPlayimg from, and switch over to Safari for example. I vaguely remember not being able to do this for a while, but that's getting OT.

The speed and quality over AirPlay from the personal hotspot to my aTV were both surprisingly great! The average signal inside my apartment is around -105 which is two or so bars of LTE. If I turn off LTE and force 4G, the signal improves drastically, to around -75, five bars.

On LTE or even on 4G, when AirPlaying anything from the HBO Go app on my phone, to a 50" TV, the quality is almost indiscernible from what my normal Verizon FiOS connection produces. I am VERY impressed with this!

Here's the best part: Because HBO Go is a part of BINGE ON! guess what? The data used to AirPlay from the HBO app on my phone, to my aTV is not being counted as personal hotspot data. It's not being counted as using ANY data at all. And it really looks great!

Initially, I had connected the aTV to my hotspot, and then started streaming HBO Go directly from the aTV app instead of using AirPlay on the phone, but I noticed that around 60min of content was using around 500MB-1GB of personal hotspot data. I didn't realize that T-Mo likely cannot tell that you're using the service through the hotspot - or maybe it was designed that way. Who knows.

Anyway, it seems like AirPlay from your phone is a nice little workaround to NOT burn through your hotspot cap...and every single one of the supported services have an iPhone app with AirPlay capability.

Now I'm swriously questioning whether or not I need to keep paying Verizon $55/mo th for FiOS.

Attached a few photos taken with an Air2 in low lighting. Honestly, the picture quality is quite remarkable. Photos don't do justice.

 

[jimsowden]

Nice! great little workaround.

 

[mellofello]

This is the future. I have already used this on the road to stream Netflix to my iPad, and rmbp. Once h.265 rolls out T-Mobile will begin allowing 1080p streaming.

I certainly am not to the point where I could consider cancelling my home fiber Internet. I have a security system, solar power, and a plethora of connected devices.

I can see someone on a tight budget with a simple network using this to save money though. I told my friends kid who is in grad school and flat broke about it. Unfortunately it does still exclude YouTube, and in my streaming I noticed it may miss certain shows, because a night of binging still cost me 500mb per my T-Mobile.

It will be very interesting what happens in 2020 when 5g rolls out. There is a strong possibility that wireless companies will offer home internet. It would be cool if there was a Apple TV with a cellular radio pre configured for binge on that offered unlimited streaming anywhere.

 

[aneftp]

New T-Mobile subscriber here.

Last night my Verizon FiOS connection went out (a node in the area apparently went down) so I fired up personal hotspot on my iPhone, and connected my Apple TV to the phones hotspot.

From there, I was able to AirPlay and stream content directly from the iPhone HBO GO app. On 9.3b2, you're also finally able to exit the app you're AirPlayimg from, and switch over to Safari for example. I vaguely remember not being able to do this for a while, but that's getting OT.

The speed and quality over AirPlay from the personal hotspot to my aTV were both surprisingly great! The average signal inside my apartment is around -105 which is two or so bars of LTE. If I turn off LTE and force 4G, the signal improves drastically, to around -75, five bars.

On LTE or even on 4G, when AirPlaying anything from the HBO Go app on my phone, to a 50" TV, the quality is almost indiscernible from what my normal Verizon FiOS connection produces. I am VERY impressed with this!

Here's the best part: Because HBO Go is a part of BINGE ON! guess what? The data used to AirPlay from the HBO app on my phone, to my aTV is not being counted as personal hotspot data. It's not being counted as using ANY data at all. And it really looks great!

Initially, I had connected the aTV to my hotspot, and then started streaming HBO Go directly from the aTV app instead of using AirPlay on the phone, but I noticed that around 60min of content was using around 500MB-1GB of personal hotspot data. I didn't realize that T-Mo likely cannot tell that you're using the service through the hotspot - or maybe it was designed that way. Who knows.

Anyway, it seems like AirPlay from your phone is a nice little workaround to NOT burn through your hotspot cap...and every single one of the supported services have an iPhone app with AirPlay capability.

Now I'm swriously questioning whether or not I need to keep paying Verizon $55/mo th for FiOS.

Attached a few photos taken with an Air2 in low lighting. Honestly, the picture quality is quite remarkable. Photos don't do justice. View attachment 614817

OP it's not that binge on saved u data. It's that AirPlay starting with ios8 uses a form of peer to peer communication similar to wifi direct that miracast is based on. Obviously Apple uses their own priority tech than the standard miracast.

That really the explanation.

http://9to5mac.com/2014/06/03/ios-8...irplay-to-apple-tv-no-longer-needs-a-network/

 

[mconk]

OP it's not that binge on saved u data. It's that AirPlay starting with ios8 uses a form of peer to peer communication similar to wifi direct that miracast is based on. Obviously Apple uses their own priority tech than the standard miracast.

That really the explanation.

http://9to5mac.com/2014/06/03/ios-8...irplay-to-apple-tv-no-longer-needs-a-network/

This actually no longer works with iOS 9 and the third generation aTV. The aTV has to be on the same wifi network as the device you're streaming content from or mirroring from. Without wifi, the personal hotspot from your phone works just fine. But it does have to be connected to some sort of wifi network first.