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MythTV has limited support for AirPlay for streaming audio Apple iTunes to MythFrontend. Previously, iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) were able to stream to MythFrontend as well but changes in recent versions of iOS now prevent this.


AirPlay was originally called "AirTunes" when it only supported streaming music. MythTV support was added in version 0.25 and substantially enhanced in 0.27.

Enabling AirPlay

AirPlay is a proprietary format and is encrypted...but the encryption key has been discovered which enables its use in open source applications such as MythTV.



You can obtain the key from the shairplay source. Copy the entire section:-

 (and everything inbetween)




Or, on shells missing sha1sum, like OS X:


Using AirPlay

iPhone or iPad

AirPlay icon


Connect your iPhone or iPad and your Apple TV [MythTV frontend, in our case] to the same Wi-Fi network.



Example Airplay selection screen from iPhone 5 running iOS 6.

If the AirPlay icon does not appear in the Control Centre, it may appear inside supporting applications. YouTube, Pandora, etc will show the AirPlay icon within the app if a supported target device (MythTV in this case) is detected on the network.

iTunes (Mac or Windows)


No mirroring

Note that AirPlay Mirroring is not supported.


iOS Airplay doesn't work

Apple made changes in recent versions of iOS that disable the hack the Myth has been using. There is no known workaround. Airplay from iTunes to MythFrontend continues to work at least with iTunes 12.6 on OS X.

Can't Start / Nothing in frontend logs

Ensure mythfrontend is listening on a network-connected interface, especially if you see initial startup logs that imply AirPlay is active, but you can't get any further. If you have a combined backend/frontend system, you may have a local IP address specified in mythtv-setup -> General (e.g. for IPv4 and ::1 for IPv6), which means mythfrontend isn't listening on any interfaces that are reachable from your local network. Usually, this can be solved simply by checking the "Link-local" box on the same mythtv-setup page, which instructs MythTV to listen on IPv6 addresses that are reachable on your local network. However, this requires that you have IPv6 enabled: check that at least one network-connected interface has an IPv6 address (e.g. "ip -6 addr").

AirPlay may also work without IPv6 so long as mythfrontend is listening on a network-accessible interface (e.g. This is unclear, though. You can try setting the IP addresses specified in mythtv-setup to a network-accessible one, or else leave those fields blank to allow MythTV to choose sensible defaults.

After changing IP addresses, a restart of both the backend and frontend is required.


Not seeing AirPlay device in iTunes





(taken from the freely available mDNSResponder source code)

   kDNSServiceErr_Unknown                   = -65537,  /* 0xFFFE FFFF */
   kDNSServiceErr_NoSuchName                = -65538,
   kDNSServiceErr_NoMemory                  = -65539,
   kDNSServiceErr_BadParam                  = -65540,
   kDNSServiceErr_BadReference              = -65541,
   kDNSServiceErr_BadState                  = -65542,
   kDNSServiceErr_BadFlags                  = -65543,
   kDNSServiceErr_Unsupported               = -65544,
   kDNSServiceErr_NotInitialized            = -65545,
   kDNSServiceErr_AlreadyRegistered         = -65547,
   kDNSServiceErr_NameConflict              = -65548,
   kDNSServiceErr_Invalid                   = -65549,
   kDNSServiceErr_Firewall                  = -65550,
   kDNSServiceErr_BadInterfaceIndex         = -65552,
   kDNSServiceErr_Refused                   = -65553,
   kDNSServiceErr_NoSuchRecord              = -65554,
   kDNSServiceErr_NoAuth                    = -65555,
   kDNSServiceErr_NoSuchKey                 = -65556,
   kDNSServiceErr_NATTraversal              = -65557,
   kDNSServiceErr_DoubleNAT                 = -65558,
   kDNSServiceErr_BadSig                    = -65560,
   kDNSServiceErr_BadKey                    = -65561,
   kDNSServiceErr_Transient                 = -65562,
   kDNSServiceErr_PollingMode               = -65567,
   kDNSServiceErr_Timeout                   = -65568

Audio glitched in OS X


Seeking on some streaming content hang the frontend
