AirPlay Mirroring: AirParrot 1.2 For Windows Still Stutters On Videos

AirParrot 1.2 for Windows Vista, XP, 7, 8 and 8.1 was released on June 13, 2014. AirParrot 1.2 for Windows is a major update with optimizations on the video capture engine, audio performance and CPU usage according to the official release notes. However, as reported previously for AirParrot 1.1.7, AirParrot 1.2 for Windows is still defective on my Acer Aspire 1810T running on Windows 8.1 Preview, too. AirPlay mirroring my PC’s screen to my Apple TV 3 still stutters every time I try to AirPlay videos to my Apple TV. In addition, I got sound problems to fix.

According to the official release note by AirSquirrels, AirParrot 1.2 for Windows is a major update. All the main functionalities have been optimised. This update adds specific application mirroring and enhances performance.

AirParrot 1.2 for Windows release notes:

• Completely rewritten video capture engine for greatly enhanced mirroring performance
• Tuned audio engine provides much improved audio performance on Windows Vista and later
• Greatly reduced CPU usage while mirroring, especially while mirroring audio
• New first launch splash screen
• Many miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements

You can download this update by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the AirParrot preferences menu (Did not work for me!). Otherwise, the new version of AirParrot can also be downloaded from here.

In the past, AirSquirrels promised improvements in respect to audio and video several times, but has always failed. Now I was wondering if they got it with AirParrot 1.2 for Windows. First of all, neither the automated update worked, nor the  manual update within AirParrot did it. I had to download it from the AirSquirrels website.

Then I check the AirPlaying mirroring of several YouTube videos, including videos from miApple.TV, and iTunes movies and TV shows to my Apple TV 3. Neither YouTube videos, nor iTunes movies or TV Shows worked properly to AirPlay. The videos stuttered all the time and several times the sound stuttered, too. I cross-checked it with iTunes AirPlay to exclude that my Acer Aspire 1810T is the reason for these issues. Using AirPlay for iTunes movies and TV shows to my Apple TV 3 ran without any sound problems or stuttering. Hence, the problem still lies on AirParrot!

AirParrot 1.2 for Windows Vista, XP, 7, 8 and 8.1 still fails AirPlaying videos in good sound and vision! In contrast, the Mac OS X version of AirParrot works like charm. I don’t really know whom to blame: Is it a general Windows AirPlay problem? Or is it an Apple restriction not to buffer videos while using AirPlay with thirds party apps on Windows? Or is it AirSquirrels? I still hope that the software engineers of AirSquirrels will solve these problems in the near future! However, I’m asking myself if such an app like AirParrot is still essential for a Windows PC user… OK, maybe for a PC screen extension in combination with Reflector app. What do you mean? Let us know and comment!

Stay tuned! 😉