Use Air Playit to Easily Stream Media Directly to Your iPad
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Air Playit is an easy to use video and audio streaming app from Digiarty Software. Using this app, iPad and iPhone owners can remotely connect their iOS devices with their PC or Mac using a WiFi or 3G/4G connection.
A connected device can play any movie on the computer over the network, even those in formats that the iPad does not natively support, such as MKV, M2TS, AVCHD, AVI, and WMV. All of these formats, and more, can now be watched directly on the iPad without the need for conversion software.
To begin, a user must install the Air Playit server onto a Mac or PC. I have a Mac, and the software downloaded and installed with no problem at all. The computer software is used to quickly and easily add any media folders that you have on your computer, including your iTunes Playlist.
Once the software is installed, the app is ready to use. The local server should show up immediately, but if it doesn’t, there’s an option to enter manual settings which you will find in the computer application. Mine connected automatically, and I had no problems with it. Tapping the server takes you to a list of folders, which, again, were set up on the computer. You can play any media in these folders.
Tapping a movie in one of your pre-defined folders will start playback, and give some info on resolution, duration, and file size. The arrows on the left hand side will expand the movie to full screen, the camera icon will take a quick snapshot, and using the settings menu, you can increase the video and audio quality.
You can also convert movies in the app to iPhone or iPad format. While watching a movie, you can easily skip to a new scene with minimal load time, or pause and come back to the exact spot where you left off. As far as quality goes, it’s not the greatest because of the streaming, but it’s more than watchable. I watched an entire movie with little stuttering and few pauses. Using the server on my Macbook Air was pretty system intensive, and I’m not sure that I would have been able to run other programs without causing problems.
This app does work for remote streaming, but unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to test that out.
Overall, this is a great solution if you have movies and media in formats that don’t work with the iPad. With this app, you can stream directly from your computer very easily, without having to worry about converting videos to acceptable formats.
What I liked: Despite a lack of instructions, this app was fairly easy to figure out. Of course, it could certainly use a tutorial at the beginning for people who have not used similar programs.
What I didn’t like: This app seemed to be unstable. It crashed many times when I was using it, and froze up a few times when streaming video.
To buy or not to buy: Since this app is currently free, there’s no reason not to check it out.
- App Name: Air Playit HD
- Version Reviewed: 1.2
- Category: Utilities
- Developer: Digiarty Inc
- Price: Free
- Score:
