If you're interested in streaming music in your house and you have an Apple iOS device, then you should be interested in the new AirPlay service.

Apple's AirPlay lets you stream your music and movies to your home cinema system. (Credit: CBS Interactive)

The concept behind AirPlay is "pushing" content from an iOS device to compatible devices, so you can watch movies on your big screen through an Apple TV or listen to music wirelessly on your AirPlay-compatible stereo. The system's designed to work with music, photos and videos, even if the video functionality is limited for now.

In many ways, AirPlay is similar to the DLNA standard, but is designed to be easier to use, and only available on Apple devices or products that license the technology.

The AirPlay icon appears when there are compatible devices on your network. (Credit: CBS Interactive)

How do I connect devices?

To connect you'll need an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad running iOS 4.2 or better and both it and the device you're streaming to need to be on the same home network — connected via Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

"Pushing" content to an AirPlay device couldn't get much easier. Start playing back a media file, such as a song stored on your iPod, and next to the volume slider will be a "push" icon, which looks like a box and an arrow pointed up. You'll see another screen that lets you select your device — Apple TV or Denon receiver etc — and once you hit that, the content plays back on your device.

That's it. There's a very slight lag before it starts playing, but otherwise it works exactly how you'd expect.

What AirPlay devices are available?

The most common AirPlay product at the time of writing is the Apple TV, but several companies including Bowers & Wilkins and Denon have announced support for it.

So far, the prices to upgrade your home cinema components have been quite steep with both Marantz and Denon charging about AU$60 to add AirPlay compatibility. This is likely the companies passing on the cost of licensing the technology.

For a look at some of the devices that support the standard check out our forthcoming AirPlay-compatible products round-up.

The Zeppelin Air supports AirPlay (Credit: Bowers & Wilkins)

Which apps are AirPlay compatible right now?

Pretty much anything that plays back on the iPod app is AirPlay-compatible. That means any music or videos you have stored on your iOS device can be pushed to an Apple TV. Photos can also be pushed, although we were surprised that videos taken with our iPhone 4 couldn't be streamed to an Apple TV.

The only third-party video app that we've been able to get working so far is YouTube. If you have an Apple TV it does have a built-in YouTube app already, but it's still a nice feature since it's definitely easier to use an iPhone to find YouTube videos than browsing on your TV.

If you're a fan of lossless files, you can use an app like Media Connect to store and play back FLAC tunes on your stereo.

Via CNET