iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

The player I recommend (review; another, MKV-specific one), along with the (currently, not AppStore-based) AVPlayer(HD), the most for non-DTS (that is, mostly, AC-3) MKV's on non-jailbroken devices has been BUZZ Player - it has had one of the best MKV behind-the-curtains demuxing and hardware playback.

UPDATE (10/10/2012): at DPReview, I've written a quick tutorial on how you can directly review and delete photos off your storage cards using this hack via BUZZ Player 4. See THIS.

Original article:

Have you ever envied Android / Symbian / BlackBerry / Windows Mobile (and even the forthcoming Windows Phone 8) users because of the freedom they have because of the storage cards? Now, you'll get an answer!

I've continuously been asked (see for example THIS and THIS) about how you can play back videos residing solely on an external, Camera Connection Kit (CCK)-compliant (that is, an SD card or a micro/mini one with an adapter)  storage card - or a compatible USB memory key. Up until now, I've always referred my readers to articles / videos like THIS and THIS (see the bullet starting with "Ripped movies: if you have any ripped movies or personal videos, you can use the CCK to add extra storage to the iPad"). Unfortunately, tutorials targeted at jailbroken users (for example, THIS one) haven't used symbolic links (the “magic” we'll make use of) either, meaning they relied on the built-in video / image viewer of iFile. The multimedia support of the latter isn't anything to write home about – it can only play back native iOS formats and has absolutely no advanced features.

The $39.99 Goal Zero Rock Out Portable Speaker does rock out, but they needs a few adjustments before I can recommend them for a hall of fame.

The Good

The heavy-duty case and wooden frame make for a substantial device. In other words, it doesn’t feel delicate, which is good in a portable product. For a small portable device, the sound is adequate. Not good separation, but you can’t expect that in a single-box device.  The hanging cord is a good idea and came in handy when visiting Yosemite recently where my Apple iPhone played away while the speaker hung on a door handle.

UPDATE (11/Oct/2012): the latest BUZZ Player and Good/PowerPlayer updates removed AC-3(A52), E-AC-3 and TrueHD(MLP). The developers of GoodPlayer stated (link) the patent holder asked for quite a lot money for the license. I've asked the developers whether the decoder(s) could be provided as optional In-App Purchases. HustMobile answered it might be possible.

Windows Media (WM for short) and Silverlight (SL for short) Internet TV streaming is a very popular TV broadcasting method, particularly outside the U.S. For example, on, in my opinion, the best national TV station directory, wwiTV (“World Wide Internet TeleVision”), there are at least ten directly accessible WM / SL streams for Germany (list HERE; look for the green (WM) and light blue (SL) links). And that's only the number of streams directly accessible through wwiTV – I bet many of the external links (the red / black-background “LINK” ones) also lead to WM / SL streams. (Brown links are Flash streams not covered in this article.

UPDATE (21/Dec/2012): it's BACK! See THIS.

Original article:

I've recommended AVPlayer (HD) in several of my articles as a player with an excellent video decoder and feature set and one of the most recommended, best titles for iPhones and iPads alike.

Unfortunately, it (both the small-screen and the iPad versions) has been recently removed from the AppStore. I've talked to the developer. Currently, it's unknown when AVPlayer(HD) is put back to AppStore - it won't happen in the near future (1-2 weeks), that's for sure.

You may already have noticed the word “Optimize” in the most popular video remuxing tools: Subler, iFlicks etc. In this article, I elaborate on when you will want to use it.

Some apps like the above-mentioned iFlicks doesn't let you disable it. Neither does the current beta of another highly recommended remuxer, MP4Tools. The, currently, probably most recommended remuxer, Subler, however, forces you to manually optimize if you want.

HERE, the developers stated RockPlayer2 is “the best media player on iOS” and “plays everything, playback is fluently, image quality is excelent and it brings so many innovative experiences” (direct quote).

The app is HERE and is free. If the in-filelist and during-pausing ads annoy you, you can remove them via a $5 in-app purchase. (No ads displayed during playback.)

New images of the iPad mini have surfaced on the French website nowhereelse.fr. Feast your eyes on these pictures of what appears to be a fully assembled, fully functional iPad mini.
 
                    
 
Read on and you will see in the following images, early pre-production cases for the iPhone 5, the iPod mini and the current generation iPad, alongside the current generation iPhone 4S. The infographic gives a good sense of the relative sizes of the various devices by using two devices most of us are quite familiar with, to represent the sizes of the two devices we’ve never seen.

UPDATE (10/03/2012): After having a long discussion on Subler's OCR'ing capabilities HERE, I've played a bit with SubRip to find out how it recognizes Blu-ray subtitles. For the test, I've used several BD discs, including Iron Sky and the international version of Red Cliff I.

Unfortunately, the current (1.50b5) version of SubRip is completely incompatible with HD VobSubs - that is, not only the original S_HDMV/PGS subs, but even the (standard-format) output files of BDSup2Sub.

This is Part III of my article series of my MKV remuxing series (last part HERE), with two main subects: Perian (and the Perian-dependent Subler) on Mountain Lion and selecting the right version of one of the most recommended MKV remuxers, MP4Tools. Let's start with the former.

1. This is how you can still use Perian on Mountain Lion – and remux all your MKV's with Subler

 

I just realized the other day that I talk about apps to you guys all the time, but I never talk about how they’re actually made. And this is a huge oversight on my part, because I make them. Designing apps is one of the major things we do at our studio! Why haven’t I brought you to the office to show you around?

I always love a good behind-the-scenes peek, don’t you?

Apps appear on the device in the palm of your hand as if by magic, but there’s so much that goes into planning, designing and coding them!

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