Not content to wait for Apple, the iOS jailbreak community has found a simple way to enable AirPlay video streaming for all apps.
AirPlay, which launched last week with the public release of iOS 4.2.1, quickly attracted criticism after users discovered the much-hyped video streaming feature could only be used from certain built-in apps, with no support for third-party players such as VLC and Hulu.
Now, Engadget reports that TUAW"s Erica Sadun did some digging and discovered that changing a single line of code allows any app that uses Apple"s MediaPlayer framework to tap into AirPlay video streaming. In a post on TUAW, Ms. Sadun also suggested that with a bit more work, streaming games from an iPad to an Apple TV could be made possible.
The AirPlay hack has been bundled into a small utility dubbed ""AirVideoEnabler"" and is now available from Cydia.
Meantime, the jailbreak community have also managed to reverse an iOS 4.2.1 change that had many iPad users up in arms. From 4.2.1 on, the tablet"s hardware orientation lock became a mute switch, bringing the iPad into line with all other iDevices. Apple offered no way to reverse the change, an omission users can now rectify via the NoMute hack found in the BigBoss repository in Cydia.