New Apple TV beta update brings iTunes Radio & conference-room display mode

While Apple may not quite know what to do with the Apple TV, at least the company isn’t skimping out on adding new features.

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Apple released a new Apple TV 5.4 beta software update today that included the ability to stream music from Apple’s new iTunes Radio service, meaning users can access the service from their television sets. The move was initially announced last week at the Worldwide Developers Conference. However, that’s about all the attention Apple TV got, and it seemed like a pretty minor addition considering that rival set-top boxes already provide access to a handful of streaming music services (Pandora, Spotify, Google Play Music All Access).

But there was one other thing included in the update that is actually pretty cool: a new conference-room display mode. This is actually something I noticed lots of companies already doing whenever I’d swing by their offices for a demo of their product, service, or presentation. Apple smartly caught on to this and is now making it a bit easier to connect. The Airplay screen-sharing functionality on Apple TV is criminally underused, so it’s nice to see Apple trying to do something about that.

There’s also a new ability for Apple TV users to customize the style of subtitles, which makes sense considering the new conference-room display feature. If you’re showing a demo video to an entire room of people, you’d want to make sure the text is visible enough to everyone.

Via AppleInsider; Photo by Tom Cheredar