medium pennant are n’t on the nose new , but there ’s another entrant to the field that influence so simply and well it should be nearly mandatory for any iPhone user . It ’s call Air Video — and it ’s only three clam .
Here ’s the scenario : I ’ve engender a NAS with about a terabyte or so of telecasting sitting on my internet . Some torrented files , a lot of DVD rips I made myself , a average amount of random Xvid and MKV file cabinet I ’ve kept for age , and quite a few h.264 MPGs that I encoded of my own work .
Now , start out video to an iPhone is comparatively gentle — if you want to convert them to h.264 . cast out the file intoHandbrake , fiddle with a few configurations , and copy the converted file into iTunes to be synced to your iPhone .
Problem is , you ’ve got to wait for the video to be convert . Then wait for it to replicate to your phone . Then desire you have enough space to salt away it . Then blue-pencil it when you ’re done .
The rude solution , of track , is pelt . And several nice coating have been written that make that possible , includingOrband ( which will also stream live TV if your PC has a tuner),Tversity(which can also pour to Xbox , PS3 , and even DirecTV boxes ) . But Orb is $ 10 ; TVersity Pro is $ 40 .
Air Videois $ 3 . And it ’s so dead simple to set up that I did n’t quite think it had really worked .
I download the Air Video server software to my first - coevals unibody MacBook Pro , maneuver it at a local folder full of video , and activate it . ( It ’s also available for Windows . ) Then I opened up the Air Video iPhone app to find a simple directory itemization . Within about three minutes from first discovering Air Video I was watch a 720p episode of a television program on my iPhone , cyclosis over my local Wi - Fi connection .
Then I pointed the Air Video server at my NAS , distrust that something would snag . My laptop computer would n’t have the CPU power to convert the video in time . My 801.11N web would get clogged . But nope — Air Video blithely chugged away , sending a real - time stream of my video correct to my sound .
I even seek check a 13 GB 1080p rent from the NAS . ( Of a Blu - ray I own , thank you very much . ) It work — mostly . Air Video lose the stream occasionally , push the flow back in chunks as it rebuffered . Considering my laptop chokes on that file even when it ’s sitting on its own gruelling disk , I am not surprised .
Perhaps it should n’t impress me as much as it does , but it whole changed the direction I think about my media library and my iPhone . I already sleep with my iPhone at my side . And when the iPad arrive , I suspect it ’ll be on the nightstand , too . Now every picture or tv set show I have sitting around will be ready to watch in just about ten seconds .
Air Video manages to be both highly round-eyed to use , while extremely powerful for the configurations tweaker .
If a video is encode in h.264 , a format which the iPhone can act natively , Air Video just streams it . If not , you may “ Play with Live Conversion ” , which uses the ffmpeg program library on your Mac or PC to convert the file in real - time . ( provide your machine is immobile enough . Most young estimator should be able-bodied to palm that just fine . ) you may also assure Air Video to do a permanent spiritual rebirth of the data file to a h.264 , although the genuine - time cyclosis workings so well I ca n’t imagine you ’d discover the need to do so very often .
There are tons of conversion scene that can be fiddled with , as well as different number charge per unit for streaming . But the default stage setting and guesstimates made by Air Video workplace so well , I have n’t yet experience the indigence to bear upon them .
you may even stream outside your internet if you deform on the “ observational ” Remote setting . Air Video will generate a ten - figure PIN that you plug into the iPhone app which countenance it to commune with the Air Video server even when you ’re away from your home base web . ( I suspect it is doing some sort of dewy-eyed DNS - similar passing of your outside IP to the companionship ’s servers , although I have not investigate this . ) The takeaway is that you could watch all your movies even away from household , even over 3G. Again , this is n’t a brand young idea , but to have it all work so effortlessly in a $ 3 app is . ( There is also a innocent version that wo n’t display all your filing cabinet at once that work utterly , should you want to test it first . )
I ’ve been toying with the idea of selling my HDTV for a while . I use it , but could live without it . I ’ve barely been playing console games at all over the last few month , using the television set mostly as a jumbo monitoring gadget connected to a Mac Mini that serves as a home theater PC . I ’d been considering replacing it with an iPad , as silly as that might seem , only because I populate alone and seldom catch movies and such with Guest .
I do n’t fuck if I ’ll sell the television and the Mac Mini or not , but Air Video has made me realize that if I wanted to , I could get the same functionality on an iPad . I ’ll never be without my video library again . Not spoiled for three bucks . [ iTunes ]
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