iPhone/iPad media player (specific features)

strumpusplunket · 30 Jul 2013 at 20:28

After getting to grips more and more with my iPad and forgiving the things it can't do in favour of its lovely interface, there is one area I can't quite find what I want: a media player.

I want something that can do all of these things:

Stream media from PC
Play all types of subtitle files (.srt, .smi, .txt, .idx/.sub)
Play a very wide range of codecs and containers
Have AC3 support

So far I have several players that hit some but not all of these (e.g. Goodplayer does most of them but has no AC3 support; AVPlayerHD has most but can't play back .idx/.sub subs). The only one that does all of these is VLC Streamer, which, sadly, is a bit pants in that the playback is constantly marred by pixelation and colour degradation. I find it completely unwatchable, which is a shame since it's the only one that hits all of the above points. Is there another player I might have missed?

MrMoonX · 30 Jul 2013 at 21:11

Air video is good

tribz · 30 Jul 2013 at 21:46

I use plex here, not sure if it ticks all your boxes but its been great for me on iPad/iPhone and now on apple tv3 with plex connect.

strumpusplunket · 30 Jul 2013 at 22:14

Well, I haven't yet looked into the codec/container support for either Plex or Air Video, but I can see from an initial search that neither supports .idx/.sub subtitles, which is something I am looking for.

Barring the need for this subtitle support, AVPlayerHD would pretty much do everything I need, so defintiely looking for something else that can do all of the things I'm after.

allosunshine · 30 Jul 2013 at 22:41

AcePlayer is good and doesn't require anything installed on the host machine.

strumpusplunket · 31 Jul 2013 at 00:22

AcePlayer looks nice, yeah. Pretty much the same as Goodplayer, though - good interface, multi-format support, multi-sub support, but like Gooplayer it can't play AC3 audio, so no good I'm afraid.

strumpusplunket · 31 Jul 2013 at 00:25

Is there really nothing (apart from VLC Streamer, which is unwatchable) which will play AC3, render all subtitle formats and stream media from a PC.

(I'm kinda liking my iPad now and very much over the general frustration with Apple, but also now thinking... seriously? I could have had my pick from any of at least a dozen apps that would do this on Android...)