Play your iPhone’s music and videos on stereos and TVs

Whether you're a beginner, intermediate or advanced user, you'll find something worthwhile in our Ultimate iPhone User Guide. Today we look at sharing music and video. What's that, you've gotten yourself a shiny new iPhone? 

Play your iPhone’s music and videos on stereos and TVs

As good as the iPhone’s speaker and display are, it’ll only get you so far. If you want to enjoy the stored music and videos in a more comfortable setting - especially if you’re sharing that content with others - you’re best off outputting the audio and video to external speakers and monitors. The easiest way to output audio is by using one of the hundreds of iPhone speaker docks available that use either the docking connector at the bottom or the headphone jack at the top. But these ubiquitous speakers aren’t your only option for audio; wireless speakers offer greater convenience as you don’t have to physically connect your iPhone. There are two types of wireless speakers available: Bluetooth speakers connect to your iPhone using a wireless Bluetooth connection and have a range of roughly 10 metres, while AirPlay-compatible speakers stream audio from your iPhone over a Wi-Fi connection. The advantage of a Bluetooth speaker is that it’s the cheapest wireless option, and you can use them for streaming audio from other Bluetooth-enabled devices like laptops, tablets and other mobiles. Most of them also double as speakerphones. The disadvantage is that the audio quality is inferior to similarly-priced wired speaker docks as it compresses your music files even further. AirPlay, on the other hand, doesn’t compress music, so the the audio quality is much better than you’d get from a Bluetooth speaker. The downside is that you can expect to spend three or four times more for the privilege. The one exception is if you use an Apple TV to play your music through your TV’s speakers, which we’ll cover shortly. Outputting your iPhone’s display to an external source like a HDTV, computer monitor or a projector is a neat trick that can be accomplished using a wired or wireless connection. For wired connections, you can take your pick from composite, component, VGA or HDMI using the relevant Apple adapter cables. If you don’t have the latest iPhone 4S, you can only output the display using apps that support this functionality, such as Videos, Safari (for playing embedded video content), Photos, YouTube, and a selection of third party apps. If you have an iPhone 4S, however, you can use the ‘video mirroring’ feature to display exactly what’s appearing on the iPhone’s screen on your HDTV, monitor or projector. If you have an Apple TV connected to your HDTV, you can do the same things you can do with a wired connection, only wirelessly over a Wi-Fi network.