The iPhone/iPod touch is one of the best multimedia devices available with an excellent screen and decent speakers. However, Apple forces you to sync your videos and music to play them on your device. Now a days, many people have large video and music libraries o their computers and it is a pain to continually sync the information back and forth. In addition, the iPhone and iPod touch have much less memory than a modern computer and a person would have to continually choose which files to to sync. Fortunately, there are ways play a video or mp3 without having to sync through iTunes. This is called files streaming and it allows you to play a file on demand without sucking up all of your storage space. Here are some of the current methods to stream videos and music to your iPhone/ All of the methods described here work best on wi-fi, but can work on 3G network if your computer is available directly through the Internet.

Ezshare

Ezshare is an app that allows you to mount remote CIFS/SMB, Webdav, NFS and FTP drives. You can then browse/open or copy video files (or any files) directly from your computer through your iPhone. The nice thing about this method is that there is no new software needed on your computer if it already supports one of these protocols. The major downside to this method is that you need to have you video files in the native apple (mp4) format.

Orblive

Orblive is an iPhone app that requires the orb video streaming server be installed. This server then streams your media through the Orblive app. The app works pretty well and is supposed to stream live TV if you have a compatible TV tuner card on your computer. Again, the files need to be in apples native (mp4). The Orb server is only available for the Windows and Mac platforms.

Air video

Air video is an app that also requires a video streaming server to be installed. It is very similar to the orb server except that this server can convert the video files to play on your iPhone in batch or on the fly. On the fly conversion is great for short videos, but batch conversion works best for large videos. Like the Orb server, the Air video server is only available on Windows and the Mac.

Tversity

Tversity is a video streaming server only application that can stream video and music to various devices. The movies play on your web browser and works well with safari. It supports the iPhone through the this browser interface. The application can convert the files into suitable iPhone formats in batch much like Air video, but this can take a while. Unfortunately, the is now on the fly conversion like Air video. Tversity is only available for the windows platform.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a service that stores your files (you get up to 2GB for free) which can be accessed by various devices including your iPhone. To stream movies/music, just upload them to your dropbox and then you can watch and listen to them on your iPhone. Obviously, you have to go through the process of uploading the files as well as making sure they are acceptable iPhone formats. Dropbox is available for Mac, Linux and Windows computers.

Slingbox

Finally, an honorable mention should go to the Slingbox iPhone application . It allows you to view all your media through the Slkingbox video streaming server. The app integrates well with the existing slingbox. However, you need to have a buy a Slingbox appliance if you do not already have one.

Conclusion

So what is the best video streaming app? It depends on your needs and server platforms. If you already have slingbox, integration with the iPhoen slingbox app is very easy. Dropbox and Ezshare are best options if your multimedia server runs Linux. Tversity and Air video are great if most of your multimedia library is not in already in iPhone compatible formats. Of the two, Air video definitely takes the cake in terms the convenience of a dedicated app and the on the fly conversion. Here is a short tutorial of how to set up Air video app on your iPhone.

Written by bontime