With the Apple TV increasingly providing access to cloud-based iTunes content, it’s becoming less necessary to keep a computer on to serve up your iTunes library. If you have AirPlay speakers in your house, you may think that you still need to keep iTunes up and running to stream content to those, but you can actually do it all from your Apple TV.
Last year’s 5.1 update brought back the ability to send audio to remote AirPlay speakers—a feature that ironically was available on the first Apple TV with AirTunes, but clearly didn’t make the cut for the revised second-generation model.
You can access and select AirPlay speakers from the Apple TV Settings menu, but there’s an even faster way to switch over to an external set of speakers when listening to audio: Simply hold down the centre “Select” key on your Apple Remote and a pop-up menu will appear with a “Speakers…” option.
Selecting this option will list all of the AirPlay speakers available on your network to choose from. Simply select the speakers you want to direct your audio output to.
