MacBook – AirPlay Mirroring games to AppleTV

airplayappletvdisplayfullscreenmacbook pro

So I've been looking into being able to send video wirelessly from my mbpro to my tv. One of my questions is can you actually mirror a fullscreen game to the AppleTV? I mostly only play minecraft and that uses the new os fullscreen.

And does AirPlay mirroring allow closing of the laptop like using displayport to hdmi? That would also help out the graphics card.

So what are the limitations, if any, of AirPlay mirroring?

And if this is not possible, are there any other hardware that will accomplish what I want?

Best Answer

If your hardware supports it, it will work. My mid-2010 mini doesn't, but my son's mid-2011 mini does support it. He plays games on the Apple TV + big-screen TV. He even brings his Bluetooth keyboard and mouse into the TV room, and they're close enough to the Mac mini to work.

Performance is NOT great on the high-framerate FPS kind of games, but should be good for Minecraft.

Even when your HW does not support the built-in mirroring, there are some third-party SW that enables it. Try AirParrot, Beamer, and Bruce (no affiliation).

Related Solutions

IPad – record iPad screen contents over AirPlay to an Apple TV and then recording the HDMI output

No - Apple TV (currently) engages HDCP only when needed to protect content that requires HDCP. This is called out in the specifications page as a footnote in teeny tiny grey text:

Requires HDCP when playing protected content.

You should be able to use whatever HDMI recorder you please as long as the software doesn't detect protected content being played. You can be sure the engineers have considered that they need to pass the HDCP status from say Hulu or rented movies on iOS to the Apple TV when playing protected content. So if you want to record a demo of your normal app usage, this will work well, but not so much for bypassing HDCP by indirection.

If you can gat a computer, a much more robust recording solution is offered in XAleXOwnZX's answer.

Does AirPlay mirroring have any restrictions

There are restrictions on Airplay in Mountain Lion. It has to do with your video card that comes on the machines that you are using.

Your video card has to be powerful enough to do all the heavy lifting of streaming so that your CPU is unhindered and therefor you can smoothly still use your machine.

This question and answer should help you out and explain things and find an alternative, such as AirParrot.

Here is an Apple Support Article on the subject, listing the restrictions and giving more information on how Airplay Mirroring works.

Here is the excert from the article showing the compatible computers:

iMac (Mid 2011 or newer)
Mac mini (Mid 2011 or newer)
MacBook Air (Mid 2011 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer)

As for a Mac Pro, they are not listed as a compatible model that supports Airplay Mirroring, as discussed in this article here.

You can still connect a cable and mirror in that sense, that has not changed in ML. The mirroring feature of using a separate display is a completely different process than Airplay Mirroring.

I hope that this answer helps you out.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

IPad – record iPad screen contents over AirPlay to an Apple TV and then recording the HDMI output

Does AirPlay mirroring have any restrictions

Related Question