Fresh Apple TV Patent Turns iPads and iPhones into Remote Displays

[RaduTyrsina]

It's been a while since we last talked about a resourceful Apple patent, but we're back again with some interesting new information. Apple was recently awarded a patent for displaying media streams on iPhones and iPad in synchronization with content being played back on a fixed system.

This fresh patent could hint that Apple is thinking of including remote viewing capabilities for its Apple TV line of products. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted an Apple U.S. Patent going under the name = "Displaying a synchronized instance of content on a portable electronic device," which allows iOS device owners to view an Internet video stream synched with stream playing on a fixed position device, which could be an Apple TV or another third-party product.

The patent also contains details about the mirroring from an Apple TV to an iOS device without entering service provider passwords. Here are some more details:

Apple imagines a familiar scenario in which a group of people gather to watch a movie or TV show provided through a streaming service such as Netflix or Apple's own iTunes store. When someone leaves the viewing area, the group may pause the stream until they return, or keep the presentation going and let the person miss out on programming.

To solve this less than ideal user experience problem, Apple proposes a system that uses a portable device to locate the source, name and timestamp of media being streamed to a streaming device, then plays back said content in lockstep. In some embodiments, viewers must manually search for and input media streams, while other implementations conduct the process automatically in the background, allowing for immediate and seamless playback whenever it's needed.

At the moment, we don't know whether Apple plans to integrate remote viewing technology into Apple TV's feature set, but it does seem like a pretty nice feature for iPhone and iPad owners to have and own that is actually long overdue.

Apple's synchronized remote content streaming patent was first filed for in 2012 and credits Devrim Varoglu and Swapnil R. Dave as its inventors.

Source: AppleInsider