Air PlayIt is a FREE media client and server for streaming both music and video over your local network as well as over the Internet. There are currently several apps that do either part or all of what this app offers, but none of the free apps in the app store offer both the functionality as well as quality that this app offers. There are though still a few issues that will prevent me from using this as my primary video application, I will outline them below. However for a free app, they do a good job of delivering what they say they can deliver. This is not a universal app, but both the iPhone and iPad version are available for free in the app store and both function in the same way other than general lay out.

As of writing this I have yet to find an application that can perform better than Air Video. I use this app regularly and have reviewed it; not only does it have a large portion of the features that I would like to have in an app such as this, the cost is relatively inexpensive ($2.99). It is also a universal app and I have very few problems at all with the app or the server. Upon downloading and using AirPlayIt, one of the first things I noticed was how very similar the UI looked to Air Video. Although I suppose there are only so many ways to present the content, I almost had the stinking suspicion that they were inspired by the later.

The experience of setting up the server and getting going took relatively little time, I downloaded the server at:http://www.airplayit.com and started it up and then tab by tab went through all of the preferences to get it configured properly. This is where I noticed a few features that Air Video didn’t have that we’re quite nice. Setting up was easy and I had the ability to setup permissions on a folder level for each users. The users each could have an individual password and could be things like: adult, kids, guests. The idea being that the content which is not age appropriate and perhaps not guest appropriate could be secured behind a password preventing these users from accessing those folders. There is also the option of setting up audio files allowing you to stream an audio library in addition to videos.

After setting up the server I began testing out the app, again very simple to get going. This was when I started to notice some of the issues that I referenced above. One of the first problems I noticed was that it did an encode of every video I played regardless of whether or not it was needed. This posed a serious threat to my system as this encode also used up all of the available CPU. This however was remedied last week with an update to the app that allowed me to specify it to force an encode or not. By default this is now off which means it is no longer a problem. Also when encoding a video file, whether needed or not, the video itself paused roughly every ten seconds. This pause is enough to make the viewing process a problem. Luckily now that I can have it not encode the files that is a lot better. The viewing process is very similar to Air Video, although Air Video uses their own custom player which you may or may not like. AirPlayIt allows you to switch easily between full screen or partial screen when on the iPad, and adjust things. You can also use ’s Air Play to watch th video on any air play enabled device such as an TV, but here is where that went wrong, unfortunately it does not support background watching of the video. This means if I leave the app while the video is playing or even hit the sleep button on my device, the video stops. This one issue alone cost them a full star and makes the app not usable for me. More often than not I use such an app with my TV and so to essentially loose this ability means that I cannot use it.

But for those of you who do not use it for anything more than paying on your device, I think you will find that the feature set more than makes up for any of its short comings and the fact that it is free means it hurts you nothing to try it out. They’ve done a nice job with both the client and the server and have features in the client such as compression queue, download to the application, and a history of video files you have watched. These are features that I have not seen in a lot of other apps and they are great to have. I was quite skeptical when I first found this app as to how it would match up to competition. But I think they have done a great job and with a few additional (but necessary) features could have a 5 star application.

I have no finished my evaluation of the app yet so I am not yet ready to rate it and review it. Suffice it to say that they have me intrigued by their ability to do what other VNC apps cannot, low latency video and audio over VNC. This alone puts a whole other spin on the type of app and the type of user that would use this app. I still firmly believe that iTeleport is a great app and worth every penny, but iTeleport is for those IT professionals who need to keep up with machines they regularly maintain, including home machines. Splashtop on the other hand is for the average user who just wants flash on their iPad or wants to watch a video from their machine or do any other type of remote video/audio/flash fun.

Today, Splashtop is announcing their new partnership with several chip manufacturers to ‘enhance performance of their app.’ This should allow the app to be tailored to the specific environment that you are working on, ensuring top quality streaming and low latency every time. This is a very big move for an iPad app to make and will change how people think about VNC. One of the goals of Slashtop is to create apps that are free from the Apple echosytem enabling users on all patforms or environments to take advantage of their great features.

My review is soon to come but in the meantime here is the press release:

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Splashtop Works with Freescale, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments on Multimedia Optimization
Splashtop Remote Desktop App Outperforms Competing Products by up to 15 Times

June 14, 2011 – San Jose, CA – Splashtop Inc., the worldwide leader in instant-access computing, today announced that it has been working with chip manufacturers – Freescale, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments – to optimize performance of its Splashtop Remote Desktop software. Benchmarking test results show multimedia performance advantages of up to 15 times when compared to competing products. Recently the app has become the top-ranking paid iPad app in Apple’s App Store in the United States, attracting more user downloads than games like Tetris, Apple’s GarageBand, and even Angry Birds!

During the past several months, Splashtop has forged relationships with leading chip companies in order to tune its software performance on popular GPUs and CPUs such as Nvidia’s GeForce graphics processor and the Tegra 2 dual-core processor. In benchmarking tests, Splashtop Remote Desktop demonstrated a sustained rate of 30 frames per second with very low latency (lag time). Competing products showed average rates between 2 and 6 frames per second, dropping roughly 80% to 95% of the frames and displaying “video” that appears more like a slideshow. Their average latency times were from 2 to 10+ times longer than Splashtop’s, leading to a sluggish user experience.

Videos taken for the benchmarking tests can be viewed at:

Splashtop: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvlc2kZKtcg
Competitor A: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVRSWFdH1nQ
Competitor B: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wHWssniGbE

“Sure, I like jerky-jaggy Charlie Chaplin movies as much as the next guy,” said Mark Lee, CEO and co-founder of Splashtop. “But when I watch Mission Impossible, I expect something smooth, fast and exciting – just like the movie itself – exactly the kind of experience we’re after with Splashtop Remote Desktop.”

“Remote desktop software holds out the promise of many benefits for users of today’s most popular mobile and handheld devices,” said Dan Kusnetzky, Distinguished Analyst, founder of the Kusnetzky Group and primary author of ZDNet’s Virtually Speaking. “Splashtop is offering remote desktop software that can unify the user experience across a complex constellation of devices and cloud services. Their approach translates to significant performance improvements that could dramatically improve end user experiences.”

Splashtop’s technology is able to fulfill the demands of multimedia professionals. “Splashtop Remote Desktop is the high performance remote desktop tool of choice for digital media professionals like myself, who demand low bandwidth data streaming without sacrificing video quality and frame rate reduction to avoid lag,” said Alan Lynch, instructor of 3D Animation Technology in the Digital Media Arts Department at Orlando Tech. “The user interface and software features are truly best in their class and made it possible to get professional motion capture tools in the hands of my students. Splashtop Remote Desktop saved us thousands of dollars in hardware and freed us from large cumbersome cables.”

Orlando Tech video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFKlkbBPVps

Splashtop Remote works with most smartphones and popular tablets – iPad, Transformer, Xoom, Galaxy Tab – and connects to computers running Windows 7, Vista, XP, or Mac OS X 10.6 or higher operating system. It is comprised of two components: an application running on the mobile device, and the free Streamer running on the computer. To learn more about Splashtop Remote, please visit:

www.splashtop.com/remote.

About Splashtop

Splashtop Inc. (formerly known as DeviceVM, Inc.) was founded in 2006 with the goal of optimizing the computing experience so that people everywhere can quickly access content and applications. The Splashtop OS product, first introduced in 2007, is an award-winning instant-on platform that allows users to get online, access e-mail, and chat with friends seconds after turning on their PC. Splashtop Remote Desktop, the #1 paid iPad app in the Apple App Store, allows users to enjoy their full computer experience from a smartphone or a tablet, while away from their computer. Splashtop Whiteboard builds on Splashtop Remote by adding annotation capabilities. Splashtop Remote is available now in the Apple App Store, on iTunes, in the Android Marketplace, and the webOS App Store.

Today, Splashtop-based products are available on more than 60 million PCs and mobile devices from leading manufacturers including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG and Sony. Splashtop has received numerous awards, including the prestigious “Most Innovative Product” award from PC World, the “Best of What’s New” award from Popular Science, and “Best of 2011 CES” award from LAPTOP Magazine. Splashtop Inc. is headquartered in San Jose with offices in Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Taipei. For more information, visit www.splashtop.com.

Press contact: 
Joanne Daudier
Sr. Manager of Marketing Communications
Joanne.Daudier@splashtop.com
408-861-1088 x131

Useful links: 
Splashtop Remote: www.splashtop.com/remote
Splashtop Home: www.splashtop.com