Apple has mastered the art of allowing us to purchase, store and consume digital media of all types (music, TV, movies, etc). Recently, with the addition of “Home Sharing”, they have (in my opinion) mastered the art of sharing that content between multiple devices (at least better than any other solutions I have seen thus far). There is still room for improvement, but fortunately, technology progresses and matures over time.

At home, I have a MacBook Pro running iTunes that I use to store TV shows, movies, etc. I also have two TVs, both have an Apple TV connected to stream the content. This is done using Home Sharing. The first step in using Home Sharing is to enable this on the computer that has iTunes running (in my case, my MacBook Pro). To do this, go to Advanced on the menu, and Home Sharing. The account it’s looking for is your iTunes account. This is the same account you will use on your other devices.

To set up an Apple TV to receive (or access) the content now shared from iTunes, go to Settings | Computers. Use the same account you used on your computer. Once enabled, you can now consume content from your iTunes library.

Here’s where it gets really fun and interesting.

Historically, the only way to consume content on your iOS device (iPad, iPhone, etc) was to physically sync it to the device. The recent introduction of iOS 4.3 has now brought the Home Sharing feature to iOS devices. To enable this on your iOS device, go to Settings | iPod. See below:

From here, you will see a section for Home Sharing. Enter the same credentials here that you entered in iTunes.

Once you are done, go into the iPod app, then to More... and choose Shared. You will now see your shared iTunes libraries. See below:

That’s it! Now, it’s time to enjoy your content.

By the way, I should mention that for this system to work, all devices need to be on the same network. Right now, it’s not possible to stream content from iTunes to an iOS device that is in a different location (such as home vs. work).