by qrayon
12. May 2010 00:41
If you have a large library of video on your computer and want to watch them on your iPad at home, you absolutely should get this app! Anyone who’s tried to convert video in iTunes knows that it takes a huge amount of time, and it takes even more time to carefully organize and synchronize them to the iPad.
Air Video promises to do the impossible (if not merely amazing) feat of streaming video files on your computer instantly to your iPad over Wi-Fi. You just need the iPad client, and a small, freely downloadable server that is installed and run on your Mac or PC. Virtually any non-DRM’ed file format is supported (mp4, m4v, mov, avi, wmv, asf, mpg, mpeg, mkv, 3gp, dmf, divx, even Flash flv). mp4 and other iPad-native format files start playing immediately. Non-native formats are converted on the fly, which takes a few seconds at startup, but then play seamlessly. Video quality is great, and doesn’t seem to be affected by the process.
The other benefit of Air Video is that without the need to sync large video files, you may not need more than the base-model 16GB iPad if you don’t travel extensively. Air video also supports experimental streaming over the Internet, though we haven’t had a chance to try that out yet.
There’s a free light version of Air Video you can try out, which supports the first few video files on your computer. At $2.99 for the full version though, it’s a real steal.
Get it here: Air Video (from the App Store)