The 500GB iPhone

Now and again an app appears that completely changes the way I use my smartphone and Air Video Server is one such title. I have a 16GB iPhone 4, which is soon to be replaced with a 32GB model (long story)) and memory is tight thanks to the 5MP camera which is capable of taking decent photos and HD videos. Throw a few apps in, a decent sized music collection and you will soon find yourself down to 3GB or so. One type of content which is especially memory hungry is video and TV episodes and films can run well past 1GB, especially those that are high definition.

Air Video Server changes all of this because it is designed to stream video content from specific folders on a Windows or Mac desktop/laptop. Setting it up is simply a case of installing the app on your iPhone and then installing the server client on the desktop. The first time I tried it gave a very positive experience and they connected to each other immediately. I specified a folder where all of my videos were held and that was all I needed to do.

A list of all of these videos popped up and away I went. I simply selected a video file and it was available to play immediately. The performance was identical to playing a locally held video and so far I have not experienced any stutters or poor playback. The only difference is a few seconds wait when the video first loads up.

I was surprised to find that I could come back to a video after watching some of it and that it would resume from the last position I watched and even more so when I realised that the app can convert videos that are not natively playable on the iPhone whilst you are watching them; there is no wait while the video convert- you simply tap the ‘Live conversion’ button and away you go. There is a minimal performance hit when you first start each file, but it quickly settles down and is fairly smooth.

It doesn’t stop there though. A beta feature is currently in place which allows you to stream video from your computer over the internet to your iPhone, and this works as well. On 3G I managed to watch a 20 minute video without any issues and my only concern was the amount of data I was using. If you are stuck in a hotel with Wi-Fi you will still have access to as much of your personal collection as you want and everything works much better than I ever expected.

This isn’t a full review, but if you feel that £1.79 is a bargain to have immediate access to many 100GB’s of video on your iPhone then Air Video Server is for you. A simply brilliant piece of software.