the app looks promising, but there are no updates to functionality for long time (a.k.a subtitles not working)
That is incorrect, they updated from 1.5.2 to 1.5.3 and just at the and of January to 1.5.4. Next to this they released 1.6 beta with surround sound support. I have no problem adding a SRT subtitle file to the movie, works fine for me.
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In my experience, Beamer has worked nearly flawlessly. Unlike AirFlick. Erica hasn't kept Airflick up or improved it for several years. The FFMPEG that it uses is out of date, even freshly compiled 64bit ffmpeg doesn't improve anything. I rarely get Airflick to work well, it also seems to be a lot more taxing on the system than Beamer is too.
The only downside to Beamer is the price, it is a bit pricy for what you get, but it does do the job better than most other solutions thus far.
Pricy? Really, it cost USD 15........
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Well, I was skeptical, after trying out AirParrot, which was a totally worthless due to the lack of smooth video. So after so many posts about Beamer, I just had to give it a go. Unfortunately, it was marginally ok. Works fine, wirelessly for mkv's made from dvd (small 3-4GB file size and low nitrate) but continually buffered on mkv's from BR (30-40GB file size and high nitrate). When it does play, the video appeared to be smooth but the continual buffering makes it unusable. It also does not broadcast DD 5.1, only PCM stereo. Wired connections would probably help things out, but might as well use VLC if your wiring you aTV/computer/router all together.
It is usable if you are watching mkv's made from dvd's and sound is through the tv not an AVR. So there is a niche for it.
Have you tried the 1.6 Beta with DD 5.1 support? It also runs much smoother, however it still has buffering issues with large files.
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IMHO this App is fundamentally Awesome and handily solves a major frustration in establishing an elegant Apple based media center on a home network (i.e. the inability to play most formats of digital video media).
In my setup I have an old MacBook Pro Core 2 duo with a 750 GB HDD running OSX 10.7 connected with a LAN cable to a Time Capsule (equally Airport Extreme or other Wifi router) A Mac Mini would be superior but this machine was spare following the purchase of a top of the line MBP. On this machine I have set Beamer as the default app for .AVI and .MKV and set up the free Team Viewer app (from the App Store) on this machine and the iPhone 4.
Now all I have to do is hit the Team Viewer App on the iPhone (from anywhere on the LAN or internet), pick the movie file i want to display and double click it - now it's on TV in superb quality via my Apple TV 3, voila c'est manifique! Better yet, once the movie is loaded on the Apple TV, the Apple remote works to pause/resume, FF and RW so no clumsy messing with gadgets interferes with the enjoyment of home cinema.
No jailbreak required (even were it available for the Apple TV 3 which it isn't at the time of writing) and no more hours of tedious re-encoding and moving of GBs of data just to get a video you already have into iTunes.
This is one of the few pieces of software I have ever come across where I would have actively sought out a way to financially contribute to the developer even if it was free. At EUR 7 or equivalent to license all of my machines it is super value and purchase was simple, with license key delivered instantly by link and email.
I can easily imagine this Beamer App is not on the App store because it is too useful in terms of sidestepping frustrating limitations imposed by Apple (and hence clearly off Apple's roadmap). I would say: grab it quick before the developers get hired by Apple and the whole thing disappears.
In the mean time I am excited to see what these guys do to build on this platform in terms of surround sound and subtitles.
5* superb.
Surround sound is available in the 1.6 Beta available on their website!
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This concept is great, please let me know if someone that has purchased this has gotten subtitles to work because most mkv files I have are foreign films for which I really need to have them working and timed right, etc.
Yes it works, just drop the SRT file into the Beamer app and voila!
The only downside with SRT files is synchronization, so I put forward a feature request to Beamer to make a time correction to the SRT file for synchronisation.
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id rather just convert files to MP4 and hve them in my itunes library
Only for keepers, you really want to remux for ages just to find out that the movie sucks?
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VLC and Airplay to my Apple TV has been lagging so bad!
The picture quality of airplay is not meant to watch movies is a very low quality (less then 480p).
