Xim 1.3 Streams to Xbox One, Chromecast, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV

Microsoft has updated its Xim mobile photo-sharing app to support living room set-top boxes like the Xbox One, Chromecast, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV. Previously, you could use the app—it's available now for Windows Phone, Android and iPhone—to share photos with other smart phone handsets only.

As I noted previously in Microsoft Xim: A New Way to Share Photos on Your Smart Phone, this app is a pretty cool idea. (It was only available on Windows Phone and Android when it first shipped in October.) Instead of forcing you to hand around your phone to share photos with others while socialize, you can use this app to blast a synchronized slideshow to others' phones. You invite them using a text message or email.

That's really cool, but the new version of the app extends the sharing to popular living room set-top boxes. So if you're visiting with friends or family, you can share your photos (semi) seamlessly on their HDTV. (The only issue is that some boxes require you to download and install a Xim app.)

Sharing with Xim to a set-top boxes works like sharing from phone-to-phone. The only difference is that once you've selected which photos to share (and you can choose between sources like your phone's camera roll, OneDrive, Dropbox, Facebook and Instagram), you tap a new Display button in the top-right of your screen instead of (or in addition to) selecting people from your contacts list.

Then, you select which display to use.

Then, as Microsoft puts it, you just "start the Xim." (I guess this is akin to "making a sway" with Sway.)

What's neat is that you can display to the HDTV (via set-top box) and to multiple smart phones simultaneously. So it works as it did before, but with the added bonus of putting the big screen in the mix too.

"[You can] add friends and family to the Xim so they can drive the show or add photos too for a lively and fun living room experience, phone to phone, phone to living room or living room to living room, and all without having to worry about your friend's Wi-Fi password, or what hardware Uncle Lars has, or whether Cousin Shahin has the app installed," a post to the Microsoft Fuse Labs blog notes.

What a neat idea.

You can get Xim for Windows Phone, Android or iPhone for free.

And check out this video showing how it works with Xbox One.