One of the greatest pleasures of the App Store is when you discover an app that does exactly what it promises and just works. Air Video is one of those apps.
By Leo Stiles
Over the last year or so we have across many PC programs that promised to do similar things only to frustrate and disappoint in equal measure so the fact that a tiny iPhone app delivers as well as it does is almost a revelation.
Priced at just €2.39, we didn’t expect much especially as the blurb on its description page boasted of the ability to stream your entire video collection to your iPhone or iPod Touch or iPad over a regular home network.
Air Video works by communicating with its sister software on a PC or Mac to stream video to your iPhone, relieving you of the need to waste your phone memory on large video files and giving you access to all your episodes of The Wire from the comfort of your sofa, bed or even the toilet.
The real beauty of this app is that it will play just about any video file and somehow manages to convert the file while streaming it to your phone without a single glitch. It really is impressive especially as converting an average file to the right format for the iPhone can take as much as an hour if you do it yourself.
The quality of the streaming is incredible with no jumps, pixelation or audio problems and on the iPhone 4; some videos looked near to HD quality. You can skip to any point in the video and the software will keep up and if you quit the video it will automatically remember where you left off when you come back.
Setting up is easy enough as the software automatically sets up communication with the iPhone and any computer running an Air Video server. You can add as many folders as you like and even your iTunes playlists. There are some more advanced options for the tech savvy but we found that we didn’t need to bother for home streaming as its pretty much a plug and play app.
There are options to access your video collection over the internet but this does require some tinkering with your PC and/or your internet router which is a shame because the prospect of accessing your movie collection from anywhere is a mouth watering prospect.
It’s safe to say that this app is one that we would pay two or three times as much for and the fact that a you only have to buy it once to use it on any Apple device, including the iPad, makes it a must have for anyone who likes movies and cool tech. Now if you will excuse us, we are off to watch a new episode of Mad Men.
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