Apple TV to replace IWB

[Cooners]

Hi

 

One of the schools projectors has broken so i went to the person in charge of such things, he has asked me to look into buying a 60" screen and an Apple TV to replace the smart IWB and projector which I have to admit sounds great as even though I've only been working with this school a short time most of my time is spent fixing projectors and white boards so anything that replaces them is fine by me.

Each teacher currently has a macbook running snow leopard and we could most likely move an Ipad into each room as there is a mix of Ipad's and Ipad 2's in the school.

 

What would be ideal is if

1. The Mac's/Ipads screens & sound could be sent wirelessly to the Apple TV (I believe Airplay won't work with the Mac's as they are to old)

2. The Mac's screen can be shown on the TV but also on an Ipad so that the teacher or student can control or scribble on the Mac screen via the Ipad, replacing the use of the pens on the IWB. I've seen an app called splash board that seems to do that, any other apps worth looking at? Or alternatively would a touchscreen TV be better?

 

To be honest if I could get those two things working they've got everything they have now with the advantage of not being tied to the white board but if theres anything else good we can do with this set up I'm all ears.

 

Many Thanks

[Michael]

Apple TV is clunky, go with AirServer. It's much better and considerably cheaper! You can download a Windows or Mac client to work with an iPad 2 or later.

[Cooners]

I will certainly take a look at the pros & cons of going down the air server root, many thanks

[plexer]

AirServer looks great one app that would provide that functionality via Ipad or Android tabled would be great.

 

Ben

[DarrenC]

Have a look at the Displaynote app - http://www.displaynote.com Edited April 24, 2013 by plexer

[Cooners]

Ok had a look at Air Server at home and I'm actually so impressed I might buy it for myself as well as recommend it to the schools. Just two annoying glitches I've found and I'm hoping someone on here will be able to answer these because if these can be sorted I can't see any reason not to roll this out given the cheap price.

1. I've managed to get it to go straight to my TV and the audio to go to the TV as well but it's windowed which looks awful and the schools would need it full screen for sure.

2. Video seems a bit hit and miss, Iplayer worked great as did youtube and netflix however the first thing I tried, Sky Go failed, whilst they'll never run Sky Go in school I'm worried what else it might not like.

 

Other than that I just need to look at whiteboard apps and show this to the powers that be and hopefully save them a few quid on Apple TV's in the process.

[jamesreedersmith]

Just click on the image on your laptop/pc and it will go full scrreen.

[Matus]

Don't forget the ipad has a (not great) version of smart notebook, which they do seem to be working on.

 

I use an Apple TV and home and it is great, but then my iMac is reasonably new. We have bought a load of 60" LED TV whiteboards form a company called Seewoo and I must they they are quite good. I was getting really frustrated by the short lives of traditional boards and the extremely short lives of projectors. They have the touch input of a traditional IWB, (but a different tech so less temperamental) but the brightness, low running costs and general lack of projector of a TV. The cabling is pretty simple too, especially as you can buy them with a built in of (I didn't though). In one room I'm going to trolly mount it as there is no worries about lining it up with a projector.

 

On the other hand they cost us £3500 to buy and nave them fitted so they are not cheap.

[Cooners]

Thanks that went full screen and is an improvement but still has bars down either side of the screen like it's stuck in 4:3 mode, I really want it to fill the screen if possible (full HD1080P).

I'll have a look at those TV's too, any chance of a link as all I could find typing Seewoo was a Chinese restaurant.

[Matus]

The importer has a different name, I can dig it up at school. If you like I could post up a few pictures of them from different angles tomorrow?

[Cooners]

that would be great, many thanks

[bclarke]

I have found apple tv doesn't work well with a proxy. It's also pricey when you add up all those classrooms. I use Reflector App for mirroring to projectors and is very cheap and easy to deploy. It has saved me nearly £4000 as I would have needed to buy HDMI to VGA converters for every projector.

[caffrey]

If your using airserver, don't forget its windows 7 only and make sure your network infrastructure can handle it.

[plexer]

If your using airserver, don't forget its windows 7 only and make sure your network infrastructure can handle it.

 

No it's not:

 

•Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or newer

•Windows Vista or newer

 

Ben

[caffrey]

I meant that to mean that the majority of us are still on XP ;p (our classroom ones still are)

[VeryPC_Colin_F]

Hi Cooners, Displaynote is a good solution for class colaboration and there is more to it than apple tv. I think its each to there own and depending on spend what solution is right for you.

 

If you need more infomation please send me a PM.

 

Col.

[Matus]

This the the screen in my room (please excuse the mess and blurred out bits)

 

You can see in the side shot the thick sheet of MDF we had to screw to the rubbish 80s cardboard wall to reinforce it.

 

Most of our teachers machines are windows 7 so can do all the multi touch gestures but my PC was playing up so I'm using an xp machine.

[Norphy]

Thanks that went full screen and is an improvement but still has bars down either side of the screen like it's stuck in 4:3 mode, I really want it to fill the screen if possible (full HD1080P).

I'll have a look at those TV's too, any chance of a link as all I could find typing Seewoo was a Chinese restaurant.

 

If you're mirroring from an iPad, that's how it's going to be. The iPad is a 4x3 device and it's going to send a 1024x768 image across the network. The only way you're going to fill that 1080p projector either to send a video via Airplay (not mirroring the entire device) or to mirror from an iPhone 5 in landscape mode.

[sted]

I have found apple tv doesn't work well with a proxy. It's also pricey when you add up all those classrooms. I use Reflector App for mirroring to projectors and is very cheap and easy to deploy. It has saved me nearly £4000 as I would have needed to buy HDMI to VGA converters for every projector.

 

how i tried what they say msiexec.exe /i "\\domain.local\dfs\packages\reflector\July 2013\Reflector64.msi" ALLUSERS=1 KEY="gibberish" /qb buyt it sissnt deploy the key and when i manually added it it just did it for that user

[Mr_K]

Another vote for displaynote. Does a decent job of mirroring the windows display onto an apple / android device. Takes a bit of getting used to but once you get the hang of it its ace.

 

Hopefully they will update it so it works the other way around as well i.e display the mac OS via the display.

[MikeGilbert]

Displaynote is great, pricing not too bad either. Mersive Solstice - Display Software for HD Large Seamless Displays, Multi-Projector Displays and Video Wall Displays | Mersive - Beyond HD Display Software Solutions - looks interesting, too, depending on what the Education price ends up being...

[robjduk]

not sure what some of the people on here are smoking but Apple TV is not "clunky". I have one at home and is an amazing piece of kit. Your no doubt want to play with VLANs when setting it up but the thing just works so well. Im traditionally not an apple fan but cant deny the thing is amazing for £100 so assume schools could get it for about £75-80 per room.

[Norphy]

As with a lot of iOS devices, it's a great device for personal use. However, for enterprise use it's not so hot. Setting them up en-masse is a bugger. Airplay doesn't work across subnets. Getting them to join a WPA2-Enterprise network is a challenge to say the least.

 

We gave up and went with AirServer in the end. Considerably cheaper and much easier to deploy.

[caffrey]

It will work across subnets, just needs a bit of work - personally were going down the airserver route too .

My personal wish is to have a raspberry pi running a clone of airplay (not xbmc) then I can do away with the PC too.

[caffrey]

This looks interesting :-

 

Raspberry Pi • View topic - Airplay Mirroring finally works on Raspberry Pi