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Comment by tomjakubowski | Hacker News Reader

> This is exactly what I've been wanting the Apple TV to be for ages. The only thing Apple TV is actually good for is Airplay. There doesn't need to be an OS or a UI for the Apple TV: your phone or tablet will be a better experience for typing and searching for content every time. Its a fool's errand to try to design a UI for a TV that isn't dreadfully painful to use: no one ever wants to interact with something 10 feet away.

Apple distributes a free app which lets you type and control the Apple TV from your iPhone or iPod.

http://www.apple.com/apps/remote/

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Yes I know, but:

1. The app is terrible. It takes forever to connect and the remote is harder to use than the real remote (swipe up to simulate pressing up, ugh). Typing on the phone is also frustrating when the realtime search results show up on the TV, it should all just be on the phone!

2. The remote app shows how Apple completely misses the point: the remote app is designed to be secondary to the TV. You're still looking at the TV while fiddling with the phone. The experience should be completely on your phone. There's no need for a movie app on the AppleTV, just go to the iTunes Store on your iPad, hit rent, and then have it notice there's an Apple TV on the network and ask to play it there. That way I'm quickly swiping through movies and looking at content through a gesture mechanism people actually like (touch) vs one people hate (TV).

> You're still looking at the TV while fiddling with the phone. The experience should be completely on your phone.

But the people sitting with you also get to see the search results come up, and together you can decide what previews to watch, etc. This is how it works in my household, and wouldn't work as well if the phone was where all the UI action is, with the TV solely a dumb display.

The TV doesn't have to be blank while you do this. You could be searching on the phone and seeing results (best for the searcher), and the TV could solely show results (as opposed to half the screen being taken up by a ridiculous keyboard). Best of both worlds.

I have a boxee and I'd been thinking about how to implement this for a while.

It seems like it should be possible to have a box act as a web server proxy where it mirrors a web page to several displays.

It would be pretty slick if you could get a simple http proxy to support screen mirroring like this, because then it wouldn't matter what combination of set top box / phone / tablet you have... you could mirror anything.

My co-worker was just telling me he wants to show his kids some YouTube videos, but the "suggested videos" are always R-Rated. So, keeping all of the browsing on the phone would be a huge plus for him.

>just go to the iTunes Store on your iPad, hit rent, and then have it notice there's an Apple TV on the network and ask to play it there

Set your iPad's output to AirPlay on your Apple TV and do that. AirPlay itself requires zero interaction with an on-TV interface.

And you can use the Remote app to directly access your iTunes libraries and select & play content without using the TV interface.

you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard now.

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