Apple’s AirPlay service makes it easy to stream video from an iPhone or Mac to an Apple TV or other supported device… but what if you want to stream video from an iPhone to a Mac? Now there’s an app for that, courtesy of TUAW blogger Erica Sadun.
Basically, she reverse engineered the AirPlay service to see how it works, and whipped up an OS X app which lets your computer identify itself as a supported AirPlay device so that when you use your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to stream content to a nearby device, your Mac will show up.
The app is called AirPlayer and it’s available as a free, ad-supported download. It’s still an early, .01 release, so don’t expect it to be completely bug-free. But if you have a Mac Mini or another Mac computer hooked up to your V instead of an AppleTV, AirPlayer seems like an awesome way to stream video from your mobile device to your TV.
You don’t need to jailbreak your device to use AirPlayer… as long as you’re cool with streaming video from apps that Apple supports. If you want to be able to stream video from nearly any app, you’re going to want to jailbreak your phone and install AirVideoEnabler.
You can check out Erica’s demo video after the break.
