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.

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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!

 

 

After months of anticipation and rumored development, Lifeproof, (arguably one of the best protective case manufacturers for iDevices) has produced, and now released, their version of the award-winning Lifeproof case, for the iPad 2 and 3rd generation models.

 

Called the “nüüd”, this new, completely submersible iPad case is a revolution of design and functionality. This cleverly designed case provides a high level of defense for our precious iPads, unlike anything else on the market.

The irony. When Rush Limbaugh and co tried to get Apple to advertise on his popular radio talk show, Apple wouldn't even talk to him. Limbaugh acknowledges that, politically, Apple doesn't have anything in common with him. And he acknowledges that Apple's technology is highly restrictive. But despite all that, he loves Apple products. And on his show yesterday he talked at length why he loves Apple products in response to a caller's questions, making assertions such as: "It's just the stuff works.

UPDATE (08/08/2012): the just-released version (1.51) of AVPlayerHD no longer defaults to the hardware playback of MKV files, as is also mentioned in the update notes:


(click the image for a full-sized one! BTW, as you can see, a lot of other players have also received some serious updates in the last 2-3 days. So did the Photon Flash browser, which I'll also dedicate a separate article in the near future. PlayerXtreme, half-visible at the top of the screen, has only received some bugfixes.)

If you use your iDevice for watching videos using the built-in, stock Videos app, you may have noticed that the only way of fast forwarding or rewinding is the positioning slider at the top. You “grab” the slider with a finger and drag it to the left/right to rewind / fast forward, respectively.

Additionally, you can also drag your finger downwards to make the slider dragging speed slower. It won't help much when you run or do some other exercise and, in order to keep your pulse high, wouldn't want to stop it.

While in the gym, I tend to make / receive a lot of Skype calls to my wife or relatives. As I exclusively use stereo (A2DP) Bluetooth headphones in the gym to give me absolute, cable-less iPad 3-video-watching freedom while exercising, I've also run into problems related to the Bluetooth bugs of Skype: most of the time, I couldn't just use the headphones I already worn to conduct the call. Instead, I needed to use the speaker / microphone on the iPad itself, making my environment hear what both I and the other party say. Therefore, I decided to investigate the problem and come up with solutions to it.

UPDATE (08/09/2012): in the comments section below, I elaborated on deinterlacing. Note that I'll devote a complete article / tutorial to these subjects (using X.264 / HandBrake / Episode to deinterlace etc.) some time. Before that, it's mostly HandBrake's (default) decombing that will be your best friend.

UPDATE (08/04/2012): THIS thread has a lot of discussion of the subject. Remember to prefer my statements to ones that state the opposite! (The thread is full of factual errors.)

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UPDATE (02/21/2013): I've re-tested the current versions of XBMC and compared it to the current AVPlayer(HD) versions on both the iPad 3, 4 and the iPhone 5.  AVPlayer and AVPlayerHD have proved out to be considerably better, which means XBMC is still not recommended for WMV playback.

Of XBMC, I've tested the following versions:

- official 12 Eden (currently available from their official repo as the default version)

- the iPad Retina-friendly version (more info)

- the latest (21/Feb) nightly build (13 alpha)

More info & discussion HERE.

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