by Dan Moren
Record your Apple TV via QuickTime X
Okay, despite all of my misgivings over QuickTime Player X, here’s a cool feature pointed out by my former colleague David Chartier: You can record your Apple TV screen via QuickTime Player X on your Mac, wirelessly. Check out his post to see how it’s done. Among other things, this is a huge boon for tech writers who need to do screencaps of the Apple TV interface.
To take this to the next step, though, you can actually use this tip to watch some video content from your Apple TV on your Mac. Just set the movie recording inputs to your Apple TV for audio and video and turn up the volume in QuickTime Player to pipe audio through as well. Choose View > Float on Top and you can even have a resizable window hovering over all your other windows.
There are a few limitations: you’re still watching via your Apple TV, so you’ll have to control everything with an Apple TV remote.1 You also might notice some hiccups depending on your connection, the performance of your Mac, and so on. And, of course, some videos are protected by DRM and may not let you do so. But in my quick check, the CW streaming app worked totally fine. So what else do I need, right?
- Because my Harmony remote isn’t limited by line of sight, I can still use it at my desk, which is pretty great. ↩