The app is a competitor for VLC, which returned to iOS earlier this year.
I don't recommend VLC for generic playback - the complete lack of hardware decoding takes its toll if not on the playback quality (on A7 devices), but, at least, on the battery life.
There are a LOT of
significantly better generic players out there if you want to play back something that
can be played with acceleration.
More info on all these questions in the VLC review here at MR:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1652736/
----------
1. If I load a MKV file can infuse send it to an ATV using airplay?
In
my latest MKV playback-related article (if you're into MKV playback, make sure you monitor the iPad apps forum here as I frequently post multimedia reviews & tutorials there), I've explained why. Let me cite the relevant part. Basically, no player will ever be able to play back MKV files over AirPlay, unless they do a full-length remuxing prior to playback, which, due to the storage / CPU limitations, is plain not workable today, particularly not with multi-gigabyte files.
Here's the relevant part (you may want to read the entire article for the full context, though):
3. What about HDMI / VGA output?
In my original article on AVPlayerHD's receiving MKV support, in section "
AirPlay", I've explained the then-current AVPlayerHD drove the in non-mirroring mode connected AppleTV in a flawed way.
As you already know (I've explained above), MKV playback under iOS must be tricky: the players need to quickly re-package ("remux") the original MKV files into 10-20 second-long MOV / MP4 / M4V chunks and pass those files to the hardware decoder. However, as the non-mirrored mode of the wireless AirPlay works by simply being passed a network address of where the source file is available, tis meas it'll be passed a link to the new chunk every 10-20 second. As it'll pre-buffer before starting playback, it'll not only return to the ATV home screen, but also insert a very long pause while it's buffering.
Let me show this in practice with the in no way recommended
EC Player ($2.99), which, as it hasn't really been bugfixed in the meantime, still tries to drive external AirPlay receivers in non-mirrored mode, when playing back MKV's:
http://youtu.be/VyaG9DqsP_o
Rejoice: no such bugs in current players!
While, except for
It's Playing Pro 5.0, all the reviewed hardware playback-capable players can drive an external Apple TV with an iOS-native (mp4 / mov / m4v) file in the non-direct (non-mirrored), full-quality mode, only one of them exhibits the "tries to play back the MKV video chunks on the ATV" bug. In this regard, AVPlayer(HD) is also better than the intitially reviewed one – the current version no longer tries to output anything when playing back MKV's.
The exception I've just mentioned is
HD Player Pro. It tries to pass the URL of the video chunk to the ATV – without success. The latter will hopelessly try to fetch the video chunk until you manually force it to stop.
That is, if you do use HD Player Pro with an external ATV to play back iOS-native files, don't forget to fully disconnect the ATV before starting to play back MKV's. And, again, no such measures need to be done with the other native ATV-capable players (AVPlayer(HD), nPlayer) – you can safely leave the iDevice connected to the ATV (in non-mirrored mode) while using these apps. iOS-native files will nicely be played back on the ATV – but nothing else (apart from the audio, of course) and definitely not the chunks of the MKV files.
What about
VLC for iOS, you may ask. As it doesn't support hardware-assisted decoding of even iOS-native (mp4 / mov / m4v) files, it in no way has a chance to pass any addresses to the ATV. Unfortunately, while It's Playing Pro 5.0, unlike VLC, does support hardware playback for iOS-native files, it does require mirrored mode to be on to, then, directly drive the ATV. Which, as with everything directly driven, will result in major framedrops and compression artifacts. As usual, you will in no way want to use any of these players in mirrored mode – it's simply useless when done wirelessly, via AirPlay.
----------
Bought it. HD files played fine from my Synology NAS. Only issue is, it doesn't seem to decode DTS audio.
In the AppStore, nothing can decode DTS except for the not-really-recommended VLC and the even-less-recommended CineXPlayer. (If you jailbreak, the essential RushPlayer+ plays MKV's with DTS excellently. XBMC is also workable but it's in no way as recommended as RushPlayer+ for various - mostly speed, iPad Retina support and efficiency - reasons.)
However, it's very easy to process your files, both MP4/m4v/mov and MKV, to have AAC or AC3 audio tracks with MKVTools (if you need MKV output) or MP4Tools (if you need iOS-friendly MP4/m4v/mov output.)
With these tools, it's very easy to quickly add a 2-channel AAC audio track in addition to a DTS one? (If you don't need 5.1 audio, that is.)
All you need to do is click the buttons / radio boxes in MKVTools (after dragging the MKV file into the app) as is annotated in the next screenshot:
(green buttons / radiobox first, red "Convert" button at the end)
You might also want to consider monitoring the threads started by me here at MR as the vast majority of them are targeted at multimedia consumers and are tutorials / reviews.
----------
As of the latest version, it's not that terrible any more - it is pretty much standards-compliant and plays a lot of formats. However, as it lacks hardware-assisted playback, it delivers significantly worse results as hardware-enabled players if and when you want to play back accelerable formats.
More info in my review of the latest version
HERE at the MR forums.
EDIT (14:44 GMT): the player seems to intelligently remux MTS / MKV files for AirPlay playback, which means it's - in not all cases! - capable of playing back even MKV's over AirPlay in non-mirrored mode. My previous remarks on the problems caused by the size of the source MKV file / the amount of free storage, however, still seem to apply. I'll post a detailed report soon.
Will have to get the IAP to stream video and see how it compares to the other app I'm currently using.
