"Beamer" App - anyone seen this yet?

[Ace1024]

how is this any different to airflick?http://macupdate.com/app/mac/36512/airflick

It's been doing mostly the same thing for a while now (besides streaming incompatible files). There's also another advantage... it's free.

[ghostshadow]

Originally Posted by Ace1024

how is this any different to airflick?http://macupdate.com/app/mac/36512/airflick

It's been doing mostly the same thing for a while now (besides streaming incompatible files). There's also another advantage... it's free.

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 The FFMPEG that it uses is out of date, even freshly compiled 64bit ffmpeg doesn't improve anything.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.

[JGRE]

Originally Posted by ageorgios

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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Originally Posted by ghostshadow

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 The FFMPEG that it uses is out of date, even freshly compiled 64bit ffmpeg doesn't improve anything.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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Originally Posted by mic j

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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Originally Posted by PsychicAnomaly

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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Originally Posted by DocNYz

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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Originally Posted by heisenberg123

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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Originally Posted by RealEyes

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).

[ELMNT925]

LOVE beamer, the higher quality the movie, the higher quality it plays.
definitely money well spent!
way better than air parrot or any other crappy streaming app.

[CaptTCS]

I would rather just convert everything to M4V & add it to my iTunes library. Then I use ATV the way it was intended.

[shadow puppet]

FYI, for this weekend only, Beamer is on sale for just under $10.

From their twitter page:
"To celebrate the launch of Beamer 1.6, we’re giving a $5.1 “surround sound” discount. Only this weekend!"

Beamer app link

Beamer store link

I'm thinking I'm going to give this a go. I have an older MBP and the price is right.

[blairh]

Can somebody recommend a Beamer alternative? I simply cannot get this app to work properly with HD movie files. It always buffers usually after 30 seconds or a minute. SD movies are no issue but HD does not work for me. I have a 2011 MBA, ATV 3, latest OS on both and Beamer, I average 50 mbps down on my connection. It's the app. I need an alternative. I'm giving up on Beamer being able to play my HD movies. Thanks.

[mic j]

Originally Posted by blairh

Can somebody recommend a Beamer alternative? I simply cannot get this app to work properly with HD movie files. It always buffers usually after 30 seconds or a minute. SD movies are no issue but HD does not work for me. I have a 2011 MBA, ATV 3, latest OS on both and Beamer, I average 50 mbps down on my connection. It's the app. I need an alternative. I'm giving up on Beamer being able to play my HD movies. Thanks.

I think your MBA is underpowered to do this "on-the-fly" transcoding, whether it be with beamer, airparrot, air video, etc. And it doesn't do Airplay, right? The beauty of the MB models that airplay is that they have a dedicated chip to do that, so your CPU is not impacted and the dedicated chip has enough horsepower to do it on its own. I personally don't think there is a software solution to this unless you have a fast multi-core processor and even then it could be iffy.

[blairh]

Originally Posted by mic j

I think your MBA is underpowered to do this "on-the-fly" transcoding, whether it be with beamer, airparrot, air video, etc. And it doesn't do Airplay, right? The beauty of the MB models that airplay is that they have a dedicated chip to do that, so your CPU is not impacted and the dedicated chip has enough horsepower to do it on its own. I personally don't think there is a software solution to this unless you have a fast multi-core processor and even then it could be iffy.

AirPlay does work for me but not all my movies are compatible with what iTunes requires for formats. I'd rather watch my movie on my MBA then be bothered to reformat it to work within iTunes/AirPlay.

Maybe it is the MBA but I'm not so sure. I've read a lot of reviews for Beamer (official and comments on sites) and I don't recall that the MBA is an issue. You could of course be right though. I don't know. It's pretty frustrating. It has to be the file itself because my SD content is a non-issue with Beamer.

[mic j]

Originally Posted by blairh

AirPlay does work for me but not all my movies are compatible with what iTunes requires for formats. I'd rather watch my movie on my MBA then be bothered to reformat it to work within iTunes/AirPlay.

Maybe it is the MBA but I'm not so sure. I've read a lot of reviews for Beamer (official and comments on sites) and I don't recall that the MBA is an issue. You could of course be right though. I don't know. It's pretty frustrating. It has to be the file itself because my SD content is a non-issue with Beamer.

If you have Airplay ability, how about using PLEX?

[blairh]

Originally Posted by mic j

If you have Airplay ability, how about using PLEX?

AirPlay isn't a solution for me. Like I said before, most of my movies aren't formated to play through iTunes. Plus I don't like PLEX or anything like it. I just want to be able to fire up a movie on my MBA and stream it wirelessly to my ATV3. Beamer had the potential to be exactly what I was looking for but it fails me.

[mashny]

Anybody knows how this compares to Air Parrot? I have that and am pretty happy with it, but would consider switching if Beamer performs better.

[spyguy10709]

Originally Posted by Chiefo

I downloaded the "trial" version and it works amazingly well. Has anyone tried this out yet? If so - opinions?

http://beamer-app.com/

It's amazing, I love it. SO worth the $!!!

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Originally Posted by mashny

Anybody knows how this compares to Air Parrot? I have that and am pretty happy with it, but would consider switching if Beamer performs better.

I thought air parrot worked well. This works 10 times better!

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Originally Posted by blairh

AirPlay isn't a solution for me. Like I said before, most of my movies aren't formated to play through iTunes. Plus I don't like PLEX or anything like it. I just want to be able to fire up a movie on my MBA and stream it wirelessly to my ATV3. Beamer had the potential to be exactly what I was looking for but it fails me.

Maybe just get a Mini Display Port to HDMI cable?

I know it's not a real solution, but it works lol.

Beamer does choke on HD video on the ULV processors that's in the Macbook Air, but there's nothing you can do about that, other than reencode your movies to MP4/x264.

[extradryny]

FYI - there is a 15-minute free trial available now for Beamer.

I've had lots of issues with jerkiness (in Airplay Mirroring) and lagging (in conversion to MP4 via Handbrake), and Beamer seems to have overcome them all, at least in the 15-minute trial.

An added bonus is the removal of the black bars on the side of the video I get when streaming via Airplay Mirroring. Beamer gives you proper size as if you're streaming via iTunes.

YMMV, of course

[blairh]

Originally Posted by spyguy10709

Beamer does choke on HD video on the ULV processors that's in the Macbook Air, but there's nothing you can do about that, other than reencode your movies to MP4/x264.

Can you explain why exactly it has so much of an issue with my MBA?

[spyguy10709]

Originally Posted by blairh

Can you explain why exactly it has so much of an issue with my MBA?

It's clocked at ~1.6 GHz. The slowest MBP you can buy now is 2.5GHz.

[rocknblogger]

I'm so glad you guys revived this thread. Just bought it and it works flawlessly. As someone before me said, this is how AirPlay should work. Absolutely awesome!!!

[blairh]

Originally Posted by spyguy10709

It's clocked at ~1.6 GHz. The slowest MBP you can buy now is 2.5GHz.

Would a MBP definitely allow for smooth HD playback with Beamer?

Is anyone here watching HD content with Beamer using their MBA + ATV?

[steve-p]

Another satisfied Beamer user here. It's a simple app that only does one thing, but it does it extremely well.

[cosmicjoke]

well, i dunno i had a 15gb mkv file of samsara i watched yesterday in 1080p that i beamed over wifi and it played through great, seemed to have a bit of a buffer lead (like where you ff you can see some there's some head room)- maybe because it was h264?

then today i tried a 7gb 720p avi file of the life of pi and it played for about 40mins and then started having buffering spinning cogwheel issues and i had to finish it on my plex htpc in other room...

not sure what the problem was, my '12 mac mini server having issues transcoding on the fly or wifi not keeping up or what... the .avi file didn't have a buffer lead like the mkv though.. possibly because of different codec?

regardless, the quality of both looked phenomenal and it seems like a great app when you're not in the mood to transcode or even remux...

am getting MoCA adapters in mail on monday so if it was wifi bandwith issue today hopefully that will solve it.

[rocknblogger]

I should add that I've used Beamer on my Hackintosh with i7 2700K and 16GB's of RAM and dual GTX480 video cards. Next week I will be testing it out on a brand new 2012/13 cMBP i7 2.6GHz, 1GB VRAM and 16GB's RAM. I'll report back with my experiences.

[Richdmoore]

FYI, app is on sale for $10 today and most of tomorrow.

http://deals.macupdate.com/deal/1400...eid=7607b7bf07

[blairh]

Sorry to ask this again but I would like to know if any MR members are watching HD content with Beamer using their MBA + ATV?

[Skoopman]

Originally Posted by blairh

Sorry to ask this again but I would like to know if any MR members are watching HD content with Beamer using their MBA + ATV?

Yes, but files bigger than 4 GB have problems, they buffer quite a lot. It's not related to the hardware, but the app as it seems.

[blairh]

Originally Posted by Skoopman

Yes, but files bigger than 4 GB have problems, they buffer quite a lot. It's not related to the hardware, but the app as it seems.

So the issue isn't my MBA but rather Beamer. Well, that really sucks.

Also I don't think 4 GB is the limit. I've had trouble playing HD files smaller than that.