Home Sharing is just one of the expanded features to be found in iOS 4.3. Released yesterday, iOS 4.3 isn’t the biggest firmware update we’ve seen, but alongside the Personal Hotspot, Home Sharing is definitely the most interesting of the new features.

What it does is allow you to stream all your iTunes content from your PC or Mac directly to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, including music, movies, TV shows and podcasts.  It’s easy to set up too, and here is our quick guide to help you get started:

• Open iTunes and select Home Sharing from the list on the left of the screen.
• Here you’ll be prompted to enter your iTunes account name and password.
• Next, click the button marked ‘Create Home Share’.  This is greyed out until you sign-in.
• Click ‘Done’ when you get the confirmation that Home Sharing has been set up.

Easy so far!  If you want to active or deactivate Home Sharing, you’ll now find the option under the Advanced Menu.

On to the next stage, when you’ll need your iPhone or iPad, which must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your iTunes computer.

• Go to Settings.
• Select iPod.
• You’ll see Home Sharing under the basic iPod settings, where you must enter the same iTunes account name and password you used when setting up Home Sharing on your computer.  Click ‘Done’ when you’ve finished to hide the keyboard.
• Exit Settings and go to the iPod app.
• On the iPhone, select ‘More’ at the bottom of the screen, the choose ‘Shared’.  Here you’ll see the choice of either ‘My iPhone’ or a shared library.  Choose the shared library.  Now use the buttons along the bottom of the screen to access songs, videos and playlists stored on your PC or Mac.
• On the iPad, on the left-hand side of the screen you’ll see a grey ‘Library’ button, tap this.  A box will appear and you should choose the shared library option.  A complete list of your iTunes content will appear, along with options to choose podcasts, audiobooks, playlists and so on.
• For shared videos, use the Videos app instead of the iPod app.

That’s it, you’re all done!

Home Sharing works very well, and no matter what I chose to stream there were no interruptions or errors.  I’m probably not going to be paying for tethering, making the new Personal Hotspot redundant, so Home Sharing is easily the most helpful new feature of iOS 4.3 for me.