If you’ve got a lot of “downloaded videos” on your computer, you’ve no doubt wished that you could have them all on your phone. Problem is, 36 gigs of Tera Patrick, I mean, PBS educational specials isn’t gonna fit on a 32 gig iPhone. So what do you do? You could upload them on a server, and connect to watch them, but you’d have to convert everything beforehand. That’s a pain in the ass. But with Air Video, you can connect back to your own computer, and even videos not in a format the iPhone can play can be converted on the fly and streamed to your phone. Let the masterb… I mean, enjoying of anatomy educational videos begin.
In order to use Air Video on your iPhone, you need to download their server software. It will run on either Mac or Windows. It will run in the background and broadcast your database to all devices on the same network over Bonjour, or over the net, so you can access your videos even on a 3G connection. Connections were stable over wifi and over 3G. They did stutter a little when using Air Video’s on-the-fly format conversion, but with videos that had been converted to work on the iPhone, the videos were stutter-free. It probably helps that I have fiber at home and Japanese 3G is extemely fast. Your mileage may vary.
You can set it up by entering an IP address or an Air Video server PIN. It was very easy with the server PIN. Just be sure to put on a strong password. From there, choose which directories on your Mac you want to share, and voilà! You’ll be watching Nip/Tuck on the train and Street Fighter: The Movie on the commode. Any movies can be streamed and converted as you watch them, but for best performance, you’ll want them converted. You can also remotely queue and convert videos back on your Mac, so that they’re ready to go later. You can even add them to an iTunes playlist from the iPhone. Having a fast Mac will help greatly. If you’re running anything older than a Core 2 Duo, you might feel the hurt.
I was pretty skeptical before I downloaded the app. I thought that there would be no way it would work well. But it does, far beyond my expectations. It’s $2.99 in the App Store, and if you’ve ever wanted to watch your videos on your iPhone, you need this app.
