Film-Streaming mit ‚Air Video‘ aktuell preisgesenkt + exklusives Entwickler-Interview
„Gute Software soll man loben!“ Falls diese Redewendung noch nicht existiert, führe ich sie hiermit ein.
Da uns täglich auch ganz viele neue iPhoneBlog-Leser erreichen, dürfen ‚alteingesessene‚ App Store-Programme nicht in Vergessenheit geraten. Besonders dann, wenn Sie so erfolgreich und beständig bereits seit über einem Jahr ihre iPhone-Präsenz aufrechterhalten und derzeit vergünstigt angeboten werden.
Air Video (1.59 €; App Store-Link) von InMethod ist so ein Kandidat, der den ‚alten Traum‘ vom gestreamten Video zwischen Rechenmaschine und iPhone verwirklicht. Wer sich seine TV-Aufnahmen oder Download-Filme vom Computer ohne lästigen, kabelgebundenen iTunes-Sync auf den iPhone-Bildschirm übertragen lassen möchte, tut dies mit Air Video sowohl im heimischen WiFi als auch über eine UTMS-Mobilfunkverbindung. Der Linux-, Windows- oder Mac-Computer rechnet die Filmschnipsel auf das kleine Bildschirmformat ohne Vorbereitung (‚on the fly‘) um, so dass man direkt mit dem mobilen Filmabend beginnen kann.
Als ‚Mehrwert‘ für die ‚alteingesessenen‘ Air Video-Benutzer, denen ich bislang bestimmt nichts Neues erzählt habe, führte ich ein kurzes E-Mail-Interview mit InMethod-Entwickler Matej Knopp.
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How would you describe the success of ‚Air Video‘ in terms of sales, user-feedback, technical challenges and the App Store approval process?
As far as sales are concerned, Air Video is doing quite well. I don’t want to disclose numbers, but it’s certainly not disappointing. User feedback is quite positive and it’s getting better with every update. The key point is not to stop updating the application once is out there.
App Store approval process is a bit tricky to judge. It used to be quite inconsistent and very lengthy. Some Air Video updates took over two weeks to release. However it seems to have gotten quite a lot faster recently. The last update was approved within 24 hours!
As for customer support, it’s actually quite a lot work. Vast majority of issues are related to users network not being properly configured or the routers needing to manually configure port forwarding in order for Air Video to work over 3G. While this isn’t directly related to Air Video (you’ll have same problems if you for example try to access VNC server from outside your local network), we still try to help every single customer.
How time consuming is the development of your iPhone-Software? Is there a big team working on that project or is it a ‚one-man show‘ and does it pay off in the end?
Most of Air Video (and Air Video Server) has been coded by one person. It’s quite time consuming, especially because Apple sometimes changes rules on the go. Recently they changed the rules for applications that do video streaming over 3G requiring them to use adaptive quality control, which resulted in Air Video streaming code having to be completely rewritten. Still, in the end, it does pay off.
Apple doesn’t support streaming video from a Mac yet. What kind of requests do you receive from the users concerning the features and what are the most common problems that get reported back?
The most frequent feature requests have been support for subtitles and linux server version. We have delivered both of them, the linux server being a CLI version (still alpha though). Currently the most common feature requests are support for Audio streaming and browsing photos.
The amount of user complaints regarding of Air Video itself is quite small. Most common ones concern Air Video Server not being able to handle some video files or video files that are DRM protected (which we can’t do anything about). We get way more support requests that are concerning network configuration, as mentioned in previous question.
Do you have plans for the future versions, especially for iPad?
Yes. :)
Thank you so much for your time.
You’re very welcome.
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