Air Video – Watch Your Videos Anywhere!

More recently I have started to look at my iPhone in a different way. No longer am I just interested in the latest games, I want it to do more. And so it came that I was browsing the utilities section of the AppStore when I stumbled across my new favourite app, Air Video by inMethod.

I was actually quite surprised to see that this app has been around for a long time, March 2009 in fact. But I’m still guessing there are people out there like me who aren’t aware of it. Let’s face it, with so many apps in the AppStore it’s kind of hard to find the good stuff these days. Also, in light of the fact that the app received yet another update only a few days ago, I figured it was still worth writing about.

By now, you’re probably wondering what Air Video does. Well, quite simply, it enables you to stream videos from your computer to your iPhone. How cool is that? At that point I was going to say “nothing more, nothing less”. But in fact, it does do more. As I’m sure you know in order to play a video on your iPhone it must be in a compatible format and converting videos can be a boring process. Well Air Video also does live converting as well.

So, how does it work? All you need to do is install a small program on to your computer from the developer’s website and add the folders your video files are in to it. After that you can watch your videos over your home network with ease. This has worked great for me, though I did find that files that were already in the correct “iPhone” format streamed better (though that’s not that surprising given that it means no conversion of format has to take place).

I thought I was done there and very happy I was too. But I looked into the details and the app also supports streaming to your device over the internet, even Edge works (though not all that great in the few trials I ran). This bit can be a bit tricky to set up. If your wireless router supports UPnP then a simple alteration to the Air Video server (the program you downloaded from the developer’s website) is all that’s required. This allows you to then enter a unique server pin into the app and access your files anywhere (though I think I’d recommend 3G at the very least). If your router doesn’t support this, then the developers website contains a forum and help on configuring your router manually to allow remote access. For me this works great, especially at coffee shops or other locations with free wifi.

On top of this, Air Video also comes with the ability to convert videos and save them to your device for off-line viewing. I tried this myself on a 30minute tv programme and have to say I was impressed. It took a little over 8 minutes to convert down (faster in fact than the program I use on my PC). Once done I was then able to view this video offline. It is worth noting that the converted video is not stored within your iPod.app but it plays direct from the Air Video app. There is, however, the option of adding the converted file to iTunes. I did this whilst in the garden and when I checked my pc, sure enough there it was, ready to sync like any other converted video.

It is worth noting, however, that Air Video will not stream media that is DRM protected so it is worth bearing that in mind before taking the plunge (videos purchased from iTunes itself are DRM protected). Although there is a lite version available that allows limited access to random videos on your computer that you can try before you buy.

One final addition is that the app is designed for both iPhone and iPad. That’s right, it has an optimized UI for iPad viewing. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to try this as I don’t own an iPad. But, when I do finally get one this app is definitely getting a place on it. Streaming movies to a screen that size? Awesome.