Posted By Paul Kafasis on September 20th, 2013

Update (September 25th, 2013): Woo! Airfoil 4.8.1 handles this, restoring the ability to stream audio to all Apple TVs. See this link for more details or just get the update now.

Update (September 29th, 2013): Airfoil for Windows 3.5.2 also handles this, restoring the ability to stream audio to all Apple TVs. See this link for more details or just get the update now.

The information below is now deprecated, and left only for historical purposes.

Summary

We recommend that Airfoil users who stream audio to their Apple TVs do not update to Apple TV version 6.0 at this time. Read on for further details.

The Issue and Workaround

On September 20th, 2013, Apple released version 6.0 of the software for the AppleTV. Unfortunately, Apple TVs running version 6.0 will refuse to play audio sent to them by Airfoil. Attempting to send audio to an updated Apple TV will result in this error:

To continue being able to stream audio to the Apple TV, we recommend that you do not update your Apple TV to version 6.0 at this time.

Further Details

We are still investigating the issue and further research will be required to determine if a workaround is possible. At this time, it is clear that the new Apple TV software demands Apple’s proprietary FairPlay encryption in order to be allowed to send audio to it. This limitation was not present in older versions of the Apple TV software. Figuring a way around this encryption, or if it’s possible at all, may take some time.

Staying Informed

For updates, stay tuned to this blog or follow us on Twitter. We hope to have more news in the coming weeks.