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Asus Cube Google TV Ships With AirPlay

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Asus’ new Google TV device, the Asus Cube, comes with a version of AirPlay thanks to and included app that has experimental support for Apple’s codec.

GTV Source spotted the feature in the new set-top box, saying the feature likely comes from the ViMu media player that’s pre-installed on the Asus Cube. The feature lets users stream video from their iPhone or iPad to their TV, but it only seems to support web video in its current state.

A video from GTV Source shows that connecting the Asus Cube to a Wi-Fi network will make the AirPlay symbol appear on iOS media apps. The device identifies itself as “Qube AirPlay (Movies),” letting users know it won’t support anything other than videos.

As the video shows, while the Asus Cube can steam YouTube and HTML5 videos from the web over AirPlay, it can’t stream local video files. That’s likely because streaming local files is more complicated than just receiving a link and playing the video at the link.

The videos streamed to the Asus Cube in the video are more than a bit choppy, but GTV Source claims that’s due to a busy Wi-Fi network. Without testing the device it’s hard to comment on how accurate that statement is. It does seem the second video, which had time to buffer on the iPad mini, stream more smoothly on the Asus Cube.

vimu

It its current form the Asus Cube’s AirPlay support is likely enough for some users who just want to watch web video from their iOS device on their HDTV. There are likely better apps on Google TV that do that, however, not to mention Google’s own AirPlay competitor called DIAL which is already in the iOS YouTube app.

Android users, who are probably more likely to buy a Google TV than iOS users, also have Miracast which offers the same display mirroring features as AirPlay. Only a few phones like the Nexus 4 and the Galaxy S4 support Miracast, however.

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