The wait is over: the definitive best video streaming app

Now, I know many of you may know of Orb and the Orb Live app, which allows you to stream videos from your computer to your iphone, as well as watch internet tv. I never cared about the internet tv function, but I used the video streaming to watch my anime collection on the go. But Orb was buggy, slow, and had relatively poor video quality. At the time, I thought that the technology was simply not there yet.

I have been proven wrong. Check out Air Video http://appshopper.com/entertainment/air-video

This app is simply astounding. When I watched my first video, I couldn't believe the clarity of the stream. This was especially remarkable considering that the video was being converted from .mkv in real time. That's right, this app supports Live Conversion, which converts any format on your computer into one viewable on the ipod as you are watching. That means no more putting up with converting files and transferring them to my ipod, a time consuming and annoying task. But just in case you don't want to use Live Conversion, this app also lets you queue up videos for batch conversion, so you can watch them later without waiting.

The only downside as of the current version is that it takes a bit of effort to be able to use it outside of your local network. The problem is that you have manually tell it the IP address of your host computer--a dilemma if you have a dynamic IP that is reassigned every day. I got around this by using a service at www.no-ip.com to give my computer a static host name, which automatically detects my changing IP and reconfigures itself. Then I simply put the name of my host (for example, johnscomputer.no-ip.biz) into the app and voila! Instant access of my anime collection anywhere with internet. For those of you without the time to do this manual configuration, keep in mind that there developer has already submitted a new version to Apple, one that should do this configuration stuff automatically.

For anyone like me with a large video collection at home and not enough memory on his iphone or ipod touch, I recommend giving this app a shot. There is a free, ad-supported version available as well, so there's nothing to lose. I really want the developer to see some revenue from this app. From the number of reviews he has, it doesn't seem like this app is that well known yet, and it definitely deserves to be a top seller IMO.

 

The new update that automates setting up streaming over the internet has been released a few days ago, so now it's a cinch to watch your videos stored on your computer anywhere you have wifi or 3G access.