I am an iPhone developer and have been playing around with streaming video to the iPhone. Mainly, these are music videos (similar to those for sale on the iTunes store). Others, are short video podcasts or home movies running in length from 1-20 minutes. To see what would happen, I tried a movie ripped from a DVD and reformatted for the iPhone/AppleTV.
Long story, short: I was standing in the middle of a park at the kid's soccer practice, watching Bella (the movie) on my iPhone 3GS streaming over 3G cell. There was less than 30 second delay, then the movie played as if it were stored on the iPhone, or it I were watching it on my computer or AppleTV. I detail the specifics, below.
The point is, it is very practical, today, to watch streaming video on an ARM iPhone or a larger screen ARM tablet.
Dick
Now, here's what's happening:
-- these videos are on Apple's servers on a mobileme site
-- no special bandwidth capability at the server... just normal mobilme
-- no special streaming software at the server... just m4v and mov files
-- no special streaming software at the iPhone... it uses Apples MoviePlayer with the following code:
Code:
MediaPlayerViewController *mMoviePlayer;
mMoviePlayer = [[MediaPlayerViewController alloc]
initWithNibName:@"MediaPlayerViewController"
bundle:nil];
[B] mMoviePlayer.mMovieURL = [NSURL URLWithString:url];
[mMoviePlayer initMoviePlayer];
[mMoviePlayer playMovie:mMoviePlayer];
[/B]The three highlighted lines:
1) Tell the MoviePlayer to use a URL (movie file) on the MobileMe site
2) Initializes the MoviePlayer
3) Plays the movie
This is the exact same Apple MoviePlayer that Mobile Safari uses if you surf to an URL containing a movie file.
So what happens is this, on the iPhone run the app (or Mobile Safari):
1) Select the movie (or enter the URL) of the file on the MobileMe site
2) The iPhone MoviePlayer:
-- locates the remote file
-- begins down loading and buffering the file
-- when enough data is buffered, begins playing the Movie
3) with standard controls, you can zoom, set volume and scrub to wherever you want in the movie
How well does it work you ask?
On WifI:
-- short podcasts and Music videos begin playing in 1-5 seconds
-- long movie* begins playing in 10-20 seconds
-- scrub anywhere in long movie*, gives 1-2 second lag before playing resumes
On 3G:
-- short podcasts and Music videos begin playing in 5-10 seconds
-- long movie* begins playing in 20-30 seconds
-- scrub anywhere in long movie*, gives 5-10 second lag before playing resumes
On 2G: Pretty much unusable
-- short podcasts and Music videos begin playing in 30-50 seconds
-- long movie* begins playing in 60-120 seconds (or more, if ever)
-- scrub anywhere in long movie*, gives 60-120 second (or more) lag before playing resumes
* here are the specifics of the long movie
