Stream movies to pocketpedia...

[PauHana658]

Well, you SAID "wildest dreams," after all! But here's Bruji's opportunity to build the real "killer app" for the iPhone.

I have been seeking this media missing link for quite some time now: the ability to stream my iPod-ready movies to my iPhone/touch across the home Airport network. I expected Apple to have some way of doing that from iTunes by now, but nope. EyeTV has a way to do just that, even across the Internet, but the iPod file is embedded in a much, much larger file that must be kept in EyeTV for the streaming to work. No way to delete the larger file and keep the smaller file for streaming.

Now that I have all my movies imported into DVDpedia and linked to the original iPod-ready files, it would be so convenient to simply use Pocketpedia to browse the collection, select a movie, click "Play", and start watching it on the spot. No more tedious syncing with iTunes, no need to keep dozens of huge files in EyeTV, when you've got the whole DVDpedia collection right there in your pocketpedia, ready to play.

I'm not expecting to be able to watch streaming movies across the iPhone's cell connection. Just across a local wi-fi network. Surely, that is possible? And wouldn't that be one the coolest features of any media cataloging program anywhere?

[Conor]

Thank you for the idea. I am not sure if it would be allowed by Apple given the Podcaster rejection. I believe podcast streaming to be less controversial than streaming movies to the iPhone for Apple. The fact that nobody has built that application yet is surprising, this is one of those ideas that the community would build since it's so exciting, like VLC. Will definitely poke about with the idea, see how technically complicated it would be (if the effort is too daunting it's hard to justify when it is unknown if it can be published).

[PauHana658]

Yes, Apple's rather opaque approval process does have a chilling effect on new ideas from developers. Still, I take heart in knowing that eyeTV does have a streaming function via a web page, which is accessible on the touch/iPhone. And my experience with it has been positive. Movies play well with little, if any, stuttering or buffering. I seem to vaguely recall another app that did something similar.

If an app with streaming is too iffy for the time being, perhaps, pocketpedia could simply send the media request to a web page, which would then query DVDpedia for the file? In the long run, however, having the streaming capability built into pocketpedia would be the most convenient way to accomplish this. Something to look forward to...

[PauHana658]

Just revisiting an old but close-to-my-heart topic....

I recently found an app in the iTunes app store, called wi-fi video (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSt ... 62930&mt=8), that does one thing and one thing only -- stream movies from a source computer to the iPhone via bonjour. Reviews seem to be positive. Wi-fi video is able to stream media from any disk or folder, so browsing a collection basically means viewing a long list of titles with no way to view relevant information about the item. That makes wi-fi video only a partial solution.

The ideal media system, of course, is DVDpedia with a built-in streaming video server and Pocketpedia with a built-in streaming video client. Imagine being able to browse your media collection in Pocketpedia on the iPhone, perhaps browsing by star or director, selecting a movie, clicking a "watch" button, and have it start streaming right away. Heaven.

The wi-fi video app has shown us that Apple WILL accept video streaming apps. Perhaps now would be a good time to reconsider adding video streaming to DVDpedia/Pocketpedia (or talking to the wi-fi video developers about incorporating their code into the pedias)? If you need any help with beta testing...

Just a thought...(well, more like a fervent wish!)

[Conor]

Thank you for the information. If the app had ben free they might have been more willing to share their code and techniques. I'll write to them and explore the streaming further. But even their solution is not as smooth as I would like it to be in order to integrate into Pocketpedia.