The combination of movie rentals and catch-up TV services would have been a great selling point but Apple, possibly because it never localises products, has failed to rise to the occasion.
For their part, the UK’s broadcasters also failed to grasp the potential of Apple’s Airplay wireless push technology which allows users to push music and video content to the big TV via the Apple TV.
Thankfully the latest version of iOS – the operating system which powers Apple’s non-computer devices – provides a workaround.
A new mirroring feature allows iPad users to push the device’s display to the TV – whatever is on the iPad’s screen can be on your TV as well.
That can be Twitter, a website, a game or the iPlayer, 4oD or ITV player catch-up apps.
Unfortunately the iPad isn’t widescreen so the content you’re pushing won’t fill a large widescreen TV but it will at least allow you to view something you’ve missed on decent sized screen.
Given that broadcasters apparently can’t disable the Mirroring feature – it’s a system-wide setting, not app specific – it seems pointless for them to continue to refuse to implement proper Airplay support within the apps.
