Article: Making “Apple iPad” FanBoy Approved Part 2

If you haven't seen the first part of this article, you can head over here and my rant is of course, still up. Anyway, on Part I of this article, I mentioned two usage models that I targetted for my iPad. While iPad 2 may have changed the ball and I don't personally own one to give a better opinion, seeing the reviews and looking at those changes made me feel lucky that I am not an Apple FanBoy jumping in every iteration of what SJ (Steve Jobs) has to offer. With a crappy camera, same iOS, the only thing major I see from reviews: dual core, better graphics. Which, while I may have digress a bit, still falls way below of what SJ mentioned why iPad is better than NetBook (yes, I am still picking on this topic).


Movie Watching:
So to continue, another major gripe I have with iPad is the inability to play HD movies. And when I say HD, the 1080p BlueRay ripped ones encoded either as .MKV or simply .AVI. Putting those movies at your iPad spells doom (even for iPad 2) for it will quickly eat up your storage. So the next best thing, re-encode your HD movie collection for iPad so not only does the movie plays, the file size will be more manageable.

However, since I was getting really pissed before of how iPad performs when playing movies, and moving files between computer and iPad is such a clunky procedure (you have to use iTunes? WTF! you have to use another app? WTF!!!!), I ended up getting two apps that can stream videos: VLC Streamer and AirVideo. If you're wondering why I get two, that's because I thought VLC Streamer is as good as VLC (fudge me) because of the similar logo and similar names. Because I hated VLC streamer performance, I dumped it and found a much much much better one. Of course, it's another paid application (curses!!!!!).

First things first: avoid VLC streamer at all cost. Don't be fooled like me (fudge me) by the similarity in name and logo. This software perform very poorly. However, the developer is responsive, but even after escalating the issue and doing all the steps I was asked for, this software just keeps stuttering whenever streaming. And to think I got a pretty good streamer PC (Core i7).

Now, let's go for the better news than VLC Streamer, which is the AirVideo. Now this thing is pretty nice. It will set you back $2.99, but it's easy to use. True to its name, AirVideo does and can play movies almost instantly over the air, including HD movies. Yes, those BlueRay ripped movies gets "LiveConverted" and played really well. What's even better, you can even convert those movies so that if you ever wanted to convert movies for iPad, this app can do it for you without much hocus pocus.

So there you have it for Part 2. Not much huh, but while I would like to discuss another usage I found for iPad, my laziness kicks in. But to give you a clue of what I will be adding: PC Management. This will be the last part that I would like to cover, so if I get the inspiration, then I'll do more. Until then, ciao!