Send non-iTunes files from Mac to Apple TV with AirFlick

21.12.2010
Last week, blogger and insatiable hacker Erica Sadun turned your Mac into an AirPlay receiver with . Now she’s turned the tables with AirFlick, a companion utility that lets your Mac stream content to an Apple TV from apps besides iTunes.

Sadun's new Mac utility sniffs out your second-generation Apple TV over the network, then lets you paste the URL of an iTunes-friendly file that you want to play on it. You can even drag in a file from your Mac that you don’t necessarily want to manage in iTunes. Hit the play button and your Mac begins acting like a giant iOS device, streaming the media to your Apple TV sans iTunes.

AirFlick’s functionality is simple for now; Sadun is upfront about this being a very early alpha of the software. But she also sees a lot of potential for AirFlick, stating that it could eventually offer real-time transcoding and AirPlay streaming of file types that are not natively supported in the iTunes and iOS ecosystem.

For now, though, you can download the AirFlick 0.01 alpha from . She offers it as donationware but without tech support, so tinker at your own risk.