Cinexplayer AirPlay or an alternative video player?

[kRAyZZed]

Hi all,

Was wondering if anyone knew of an iPad video app that plays divx etc like cinexplayer but also works with 4.3 AirPlay.

I was really hoping that cinexplayer would have had an update by now, and I have even emailed and tweeted to the devs asking for an eta but had no response as of yet.

So anyone know of a way to get video AirPlay working on it, or an alterenative app that would do the trick?

Thanks all

~kRAyZZed

 

[thedon1]

I'm waiting for the same thing, been looking but not found anything yet. It's such a shame that VLC got pulled from the app store, it can play so many formats, if they included airplay it would be amazing.

One thing about video players, i try playing a 720p file in vlc, it's all choppy, if i play the same file in the ipod app, it's smooth. I'm guessing that video players cannot use hardware acceleration like the ipod can? Can anyone clear this up?

 

[cinca]

I took a number and am waiting on cinexplayer as well.

When the app was initially released they developers were pretty proactive about getting updates out there and communicating planned future improvements.

I *think* the app (or the company that made it?) was then purchased by some larger company company that makes a variety of other random programs. Anyone know..?

The last big announcement I could find was from a few months ago stating that an upcoming version of cinexplayer would support 3d movies -- which it kind of a ridiculous joke if you ask me. Seems like they are "jumping on the bandwagon" of 3D rather than putting resources towards the improvements that their actual users care about.

I don't know WHO is interested in 3D... My guess is that it is some poor product managers out of touch boss that is more concerned with the product appearing "forward thinking" rather than servicing it's actual users.

Airplay support.. AC3 support... File renaming.... MKV support....

Each and every one of those things would get used (and appreciated) by Cinexplayer users everyday. 3D support..? Ridiculous. Its the kind of decision that has me imagining someone else popping up and producing an alternative program that does everything cinexplayer does PLUS the other things it should be doing...

 

[thedon1]

Wow, 3D, what a waste of resources.

http://www.edavs.com/index.shtml

These guys have 2 apps, Oplayer and airplayer.

I tried a free version of Oplayer, it seems very similar to VLC. When you play a video, there's an airplay icon but it only streams audio. Hopefully they add video but we'll see.

Airplayer streams from your computer, transcoding on the fly and has airplay enabled. Good if you stream within the home, bad if you want the media on the device. Have not tried it but have heard good things.

 

[kRAyZZed]

Air player is pretty good, I use it fairly often when I'm at home, and when I'm out to watch media on my home server.

It does of course have it's restrictions sadly, and at times can be a wee bit buggy with AirPlay - but not terribly so.

I have started taking my ATV2 with me when I go to friends or away with work. So the ability to play avi files straight off the iPad on a screen is very handy.

I do on the other hand also convert alot of my files to mp4 to use apples movie player, but there is a fair bit of effort in converting files constantly lol

 

[blackNBUK]

I doubt that any of these alternative video players will support AirPlay any time soon. The problem is in the way AirPlay works. AirPlay works by sending the encoded video file to the ATV and decoding it there. This means that only Apple supported formats (eg. MP4, MOV) can be played over AirPlay.

 

[thedon1]

I doubt that any of these alternative video players will support AirPlay any time soon. The problem is in the way AirPlay works. AirPlay works by sending the encoded video file to the ATV and decoding it there. This means that only Apple supported formats (eg. MP4, MOV) can be played over AirPlay.

Do you know if they support video out via HDMI? Is that a standard feature of 4.3 or does it need to be enabled in-app?

 

[blackNBUK]

Do you know if they support video out via HDMI? Is that a standard feature of 4.3 or does it need to be enabled in-app?

Both

Mirroring is a standard feature of 4.3 and I believe it should work on any App. However I think that it only works on iPad 2 and it only displays output in 4:3 ratio.

Apps can also explicitly use video output. This works on all iPads and allows Apps to output widescreen video, however the App has to written to support it. I don't know if Cinexplayer, OPlayer or whatever do do this but I can't see any particular reason why they couldn't.

 

[cinca]

Both
Apps can also explicitly use video output. This works on all iPads and allows Apps to output widescreen video, however the App has to written to support it. I don't know if Cinexplayer, OPlayer or whatever do do this but I can't see any particular reason why they couldn't.

For those wondering, cinexplayer does support the new hdmi output for an ipad 1. It's a little wonky starting up sometimes (make sure you tv is on and, i think, sending a signal that it is ready for a video signal) but once you kinda figure out the very mild quirkiness a few times it's pretty simple to throw up your movies on your big screen.

Not a bad solution -- I wish/hope there is an airplay solution to make it even easier with an apple tv but i suspect, like some other posters have said, air pay relies upon the device streaming the DATA and the apple tv uncompressing it... So this wouldn't work for an application like cinexplayer as it's explicit purpose is to locally uncompress non-standard video... Which means the apple tv would stumble.

What is likely to eventually happen is that either the appletv will eventually get apps -- like cinexplayer for apple tv -- and that will uncompress non-standard video like the iPad/iphone app does.. Or, eventually, there might be an app that runs on your ipad or iPhone that transcodes the non--appletv friendly video into a format that can stream and play nice with apple tv. This is what a number of OSx programs do to local files that then allow them to stream to your iOS decive running an app that connects to your file and the transcoding service running on your home computer or laptop. This solution is processor intensive and I would guess not likely possible on an ipad1 or iPhone4... But with the multicore ipad 2 and future iPhones I would guess there is maybe enough processing power to transcode and stream the video in a file that appletv accepts...

I am no engineer though so it's all the conjecture of an optimistic user...

Anyone else have thoughts about potential future solutions to getting non-standard video files (xvid, etc) happily airplaying with an appletv..?