This year’s CES had a few surprise announcements from the likes of Samsung, LG, and Sony. These surprises came in the form of announcements that the TVs made by those companies would all support Apple’s AirPlay 2 protocol. Given the fierce rivalry that Apple has with Samsung, it was actually very surprising, although very much welcome.
Now it seems that Apple has recently updated its website where they are now listing all the TVs that are compatible with AirPlay 2. This includes all the TVs from the companies we mentioned above, as well as several from Vizio, with Vizio having a slight advantage based on the fact that it lists 2017 and 2018 models that also support AirPlay 2, meaning that customers won’t need to go and buy the latest TVs in order to take advantage of it.
That being said, we’re sure that some are probably wondering what’s the difference between Apple’s AirPlay 2 standard versus other wireless standards such as Bluetooth. One of those differences is in video, where if you own an iOS device and wanted to stream it to your TV, you had to previously use an Apple TV to do so.
However with these new TVs supporting AirPlay 2, you won’t need an Apple TV to mirror the contents of your phone to your television. While we’re sure that companies like Samsung, LG, Sony, and Vizio would prefer having their own standards, adopting AirPlay 2 could encourage more customers to buy their products. We expect that this list won’t be final but it is off to a very good start.