AVPlayerHD in 2013 - How is it on iPad mini and iPad 2?

[Eug]

My sis' wants to get an LCD-based e-reader and is considering the iPad mini. I suggested an e-ink device but she wants a single unit both for light e-reading and for surfing and email, as well as video playback. She doesn't want another device partially because for novels, she just buys paperbacks. The e-reading she'd do on a tablet is short stuff and articles, etc.

She asked me about Android, but quite honestly I thought she'd be better off with an iPad mini, because she's vested in the Mac and iOS ecosystem (with a MacBook Air and iPhone 4S, and soon an iMac as well), and she likes the interplay of her devices.

The two things that are holding me back recommending the iPad mini though are:

1) The iPad mini is not Retina. I use 1024x768 on my iPad 2 and it's OK, and it's even better on an iPad mini, but it's not ideal. I have strong suspicions Apple will release a Retina iPad mini this year, and my sis is in no rush to buy. She's inclined to wait for the next release anyway.

2) MKV playback. Her daughter has some MKV files she wants to watch, but in previous years I was less than impressed with MKV playback on iOS. How much better is it now, in 2013? I'm thinking AVPlayerHD, but I don't actually have a copy of that, since I paid for DicePlayer on Android myself instead. I don't have any 3rd party video player for our iPad 2. AVPlayerHD doesn't stream over WiFi, right? That's annoying but not a deal killer for her. However, how complex or clunky is the movie loading for AVPlayerHD? Also, how good is the file format support? How well do 720p and 1080p MKV work on the A5 (iPad 2 and iPad mini) and A5X (iPad 3)? I'm not sure what SoC the next iPad mini will get, but I wonder if it will be a 32 nm A5X.

 

[lopri]

Copy/pasted from apple product site.

Video formats supported: H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High Profile level 4.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG‑4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format (Bolded by me)

I don't know anything about MKV playback or AVPlayerHD, but 2.5 Mbps may have some relevance to your query.

 

[poofyhairguy]

How well do 720p and 1080p MKV work on the A5

Really really well. Like surprisingly well. I can't find a mkv file in my huge library my wife's iPad 2 can't play.

With that said, I don't use AVPlayerHD on there. I use XBMC which requires jailbreak. XBMC is my go-to player on all my devices, and is the only player that will let my wife easily watch mkvs on usb devices on her iPad.

 

[amdhunter]

Most .mkv files play fine - my iPad 3 still struggles with 10-bit encoded anime, which unfortunately - 99.996% of new anime is encoded with.

From what I heard the iPad 4 also has trouble playing them. FWIW, Nexus 7 is pretty crap too with 10-bit encodes.

 

[Eug]

I don't know anything about MKV playback or AVPlayerHD, but 2.5 Mbps may have some relevance to your query.

That's for regular MPEG4 at 640x480, not H.264 files. It actually does well with HD H.264 QuickTime files. For H.264:

"H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High Profile level 4.1"

That's pretty good specs for QuickTime actually. I've tried HD H.264 files at around 5-10 Mbps and they played fine.

However, I just wasn't sure if that applied to MKV in AVPlayerHD as well.

Really really well. Like surprisingly well. I can't find a mkv file in my huge library my wife's iPad 2 can't play.

Hey, that's great. I guess AVPlayerHD also uses hardware acceleration then for 1080p H.264.

 

[TheStu]

I use AirVideo to stream the files from my desktop, but that will actually transcode the files on the fly and stream it over. It works well, but you obviously take a slight quality hit.

 

[Eug]

I use AirVideo to stream the files from my desktop, but that will actually transcode the files on the fly and stream it over. It works well, but you obviously take a slight quality hit.

Not sure if my sis would want to go to the trouble, but then again it may be worth it to get the streaming feature. I am assuming you are confirming that AVPlayerHD doesn't stream.

However, it's moot at the moment, because she doesn't have an iMac yet.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Most .mkv files play fine - my iPad 3 still struggles with 10-bit encoded anime, which unfortunately - 99.996% of new anime is encoded with.

From what I heard the iPad 4 also has trouble playing them. FWIW, Nexus 7 is pretty crap too with 10-bit encodes.

Huh, my One X handles 1080p 10bit anime and it's a slower SoC. I guess MX Player's hardware+ mode does some sort of wizardry.

[edit]WRONG. It was just regular 1080p

 

[Eug]

Thanks but Anime isn't a concern to us, and esp. to my sister. However, I'm curious, if MX Player is doing fine, which software isn't doing fine on the Nexus 7? I bought/donated to DicePlayer but I don't think I ever bought MX Player. Mind you maybe I should. I still have tons of Google bux left over from the different accounts I got for buying multiple Nexus 7s. I occasionally get weird audio issues in DicePlayer.

P.S. Why 10-bit anyway? Colour banding?

 

[badb0y]

I use CineXPlayerHD on my iPad Mini and that works really well for me.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Thanks but Anime isn't a concern to us, and esp. to my sister. However, I'm curious, if MX Player is doing fine, which software isn't doing fine on the Nexus 7? I bought/donated to DicePlayer but I don't think I ever bought MX Player. Mind you maybe I should. I still have tons of Google bux left over from the different accounts I got for buying multiple Nexus 7s. I occasionally get weird audio issues in DicePlayer.

P.S. Why 10-bit anyway? Colour banding?

Anime isn't the point =P. But actually I need to double-check if what I was watching was 10bit, it may have been just regular bloated 1080p.

10bit encoding is just another profile in h.264 that was recently implemented in x264. The benefits is better quality and significant size savings over regular h.264 encoding but the cost is slower decode and some hardware decoders can't handle it.

MX Player is free anyway.

[edit]I made a mistake, the series I was watching had only the latter episodes in 10bit and I wasn't watching those

 

[Eug]

I'll check out CineXPlayerHD. Thanks, I had never heard of it.

MX Player is free anyway.

It's CAD$5.70 for the ad-free version. But I'll download the free version again. I tested it once way back, but then got DicePlayer (donationware) and stuck with that.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Dice Player works very well usually. There shouldn't be any need to try MX Player if Dice Player is working for you.

It looks like 10bit hardware decoding is only available on a few devices right now.

 

[Eug]

Dice Player works very well usually. There shouldn't be any need to try MX Player if Dice Player is working for you.

It looks like 10bit hardware decoding is only available on a few devices right now.

Well, I've come across very occasional MKV files that get weird audio glitches in DicePlayer. They work fine in VLC on my computers.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Ah, I can't remember if Dice Player has the ability to do software audio decoding combined with hardware video decoding like MX Player does. Usually any bugs in the audio decoding hardware can be worked around by doing that.

 

[TheStu]

Not sure if my sis would want to go to the trouble, but then again it may be worth it to get the streaming feature. I am assuming you are confirming that AVPlayerHD doesn't stream.

However, it's moot at the moment, because she doesn't have an iMac yet.

I already had a license for AirVideo from way back, so although I have AVPlayerHD, I haven't really used it much at all, but as I recall, the streaming isn't as straighforward as AirVideo's.

With AirVideo, you install the server software on the host, and point it to what you want access to. Then, so long as you are on the same network, the server should show up in AirVideo on the iDevice.

 

[MrX8503]

I use air video as well and its pretty awesome. I stream and transcode rather than store the movies on the device itself.

If your sis is willing to wait, definitely wait and see if the retina iPad mini is real.

 

[Eug]

So my sis got the iMac but hasn't got the Retina mini yet so it may be moot for her for now. However, for me, I am considering getting AVPlayerHD for my iPad 2. Still working well with higher bitrate mkv? I note that vlc doesn't like the iPad 2. It gives me warnings that it may be too slow for relatively high bitrate 1080p H.264 mkv.

Also, now that I have an iPhone 5s, do I really need to get both AVPlayerHD and AVPlayer? The app description page says AVPlayer supports the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, but the page for AVPlayerHD says it only supports the iPad.

P.S. I hear that AirVideo crashes in iOS 7.

 

[Eug]

Well, whaddya know?!?

I just activated Video Station on my Synology NAS, and using their iOS app DS video, streaming playback is fine on my iPhone 5s using vlc 2.1.3.

So I don't think I need anything for my iPhone now.

However, the iPad 2 is still an issue, because this particular NAS cannot do on-the-fly transcoding for the video. It just transcodes the audio. My NAS's CPU is not powerful enough for video transcoding. However, I'm thinking the combo of AV Player HD with DS Video could do the trick.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I am kinda shocked the iPad 2 has troubles as I have played huge DTS mkvs on my wife's via USB and XBMC.

 

[Eug]

I don't think vlc is making proper use of hardware acceleration on the iPad 2. Not an issue on the iPhone 5s though. I'm not even bothering with audio transcoding on the 5s either as I think the Video Station software is a bit buggy with audio transcoding. I lost audio once on the iPad 2 in limited testing.

BTW, when you say USB and XBMC, do you mean jail broken?

 

[poofyhairguy]

Yup jailbroken iOS6. Won't move her stuff to iOS7 without jailbreak as she is hooked on the capability.

Heck XBMC on the iPad 2 can play my pure Blue Ray rips via 5ghz N from my media server as good as my HTPC stations can. Only have problems with things like VC1 encodes, 30gb+ h264 mkvs play fine.

I have no 10bit stuff to test as I don't really like modern Anime.

 

[boomhower]

Thought about converting the files? MKV-mp4 doesn't require a re-encode, just a container change. I can do 10gb movies in 2-3 minutes on 2011 2.2ghz MBP. Then it'll be native.

 

[Eug]

Thanks, I tried converting files before to a different container, but sometimes I'd run into problems, esp. sync probs, and it's an extra step that I don't want to do anyway. Truthfully I'd rather just get a 64-bit iPad of some sort next year. It turns out that apparently AV Player HD may not be supported with Synology's DS Video at this time, but like I said vlc is supported and seems to work with A7-based hardware on high bitrate H.264 mkv files. Dunno about A6. Who knows, maybe they'll eventually get vlc optimized for A5X as well, but I'm not counting on it.

 

[Eug]

I bought nplayer (CAD$4.99). It seems promising even on the iPad 2, as it has hardware acceleration. Streams fine from smb shares.

AC3 support is official and licenced. No DTS support though.