Home Sharing has its advantages, but with advantages, there’s always a catch. This one don’t really have a catch, if you just want to listen to your music from your PC or Mac, then all you need is have your PC or Mac and iTunes open with Home Sharing Enabled. Then your iOS Device with 4.3 or higher can stream your Home Shared Library to your iPod Touch 4, iPhone 4, iPad 2, or any iOS Device with OS 4.3 or higher.
What’s the point? Why don’t I just copy the music to my iPod Touch 64Gb, or my iPhone 4 32Gb, or my iPad 2 64Gb? Well, if you have the room, that’s great. However, Home Sharing isn’t limited to just Music Streaming, you can stream your videos to your iDevices locally. In my case, the videos are well worth the advantages. I can watch videos and play it onto my Apple TV (2nd Gen) in my Living Room or I can watch the videos on my iPad directly. I can even watch rented movies and watch other videos directly to my TV that my Apple TV isn’t attached to using the iPad 2 HDMI Connector or the VGA Connector, or even the Component Connector.
So how would you set your iTunes Home Sharing? First, enable it in iTunes, by going to the Advanced Menu and go down to Turn On Home Sharing. That’s it.
What hardware do I need to listen to music? You actually don’t need hardware if you just want to listen and watch videos on your iDevice directly. My setup is different. I have Airport Express, attached to my Receiver in the Living Room. Airport Express can only send audio to your receiver and it uses the headphone type jack like on your iPhone headphone jack. That’s the only hardware you need if you want to just do AirTunes to your Home Stereo Receiver. This method works even if you don’t have iDevices, you can use your PC or Mac to straight send audio to AirTunes by selecting the option on the bottom right corner of iTunes, you will see a TV like icon with an Arrow Up.
What if you want to watch whatever you rent or buy from iTunes to your Apple TV 2? That’s easy, you can either Sync your iTunes Library on your Apple TV 2 or Stream. I would suggest Sync so your PC or Mac don’t need to be on. The exact setup on both Sync or Stream can be found on Apple Support Website.