Q: I noticed in your videos that the new Apple TV has an “AirTunes” menu option. What is this for? I’m hoping this means that the new Apple TV can send video out to AirTunes stations, but is it compatible with the older Airport Express units, or are we going to need to buy new ones?
Jenn
A: Actually, there has been some confusion about the “AirTunes” feature that now appears in the Apple TV v2.0, so while at Macworld we went and got confirmation directly from Apple regarding how this feature works.
Basically, the “AirTunes” menu allows you to configure your Apple TV as an AirTunes client, meaning you can stream music from your iTunes library to your Apple TV. This basically means that the Apple TV acts as an Airport Express station as far as iTunes is concerned, and you will be able to stream music and other audio content through it from iTunes without having to turn on your TV or navigate through the music library from the Apple TV itself.
The menu options on the Apple TV itself actually only provide two options: Toggle AirTunes on or off, and set the password that iTunes will use to connect to the Apple TV to stream audio content to it.
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