iOS 8 AirPlay brings a peer-to-peer AirPlay option to wirelessly connect your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to your Apple TV. You do not need to be connected to a WiFi network. With this option, any friend, colleague or partner of yours is able to stream content from his iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to your Apple TV via AirPlay. The peer-to-peer AirPlay discovery and playback is shortly introduced on a Apple iOS 8 enterprise page.
Source: apple.com
Nothing is officially known how the peer-to-peer iOS 8 AirPlay is working, but it will obviously use the same technique as AirDrop. Up to now, AirPlay requires both devices being connected to the same WiFi network before starting AirPlay. With the upcoming new iOS 8 Airplay feature, it is much more convenient to show via peer-to-peer AirPlay a presentation, join a multi-player iOS game or just show pictures and videos from your last holiday. You do not need to join a WiFi network and ask your host for the password.
Furthermore, security issue for accessing an external network are not given. On the other hand, the peer-to-peer connection should be secure as well. Right now, nothing is known about the security set-up. But it is obvious that it will be handled in the same way as it already is on an Apple TV:
There will be a simple option in the Apple TV menu: Enable peer-to-peer (On/Off), sub option – ‘Require password (Yes/No) or, much easier as already existing, you can use an ad-hoc PIN that will come up on your TV screen.
iOS 8 AirPlay with a peer-to-peer connection without WiFi will make the use of Apple TV much more convenient and is the next step to fully integrate Apple TV in the iOS and Mac OSA X biosphere. Hopefully, peer-to-peer AirPlay will be available on Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite as well.
Stay tuned! 😉