Airvideo vs streamtome vs zumocast

[matt_90036]

Airvideo vs streamtome vs zumocast
Is there any difference between these 3?
I got zumocast for free but if the other ones offer better quality video, etc... Then I don't mind paying few bucks.

 

[Jake18oly]

I have never used streamtome but I have the other two. I don't see a huge difference in quality although sometimes I think Airvideo streams are somewhat smoother. I like Zumocast the most though because it not only streams videos but allows you to access music, pictures and docs from your computer.

 

[ArthurIhde]

zumocast is the best

 

[dkazaz]

I have used all three.

If you mainly need video, which I think is the case for most, go for air video. The server is pretty stable, the login method over the web is smooth (though personally I don't use it often for reasons of security) and the playback is fine. It does place a pretty heavy load on your PC, so if you want to stream HD video, be prepared for 95% CPU load (on my 3GHz, Quad-core Intel).

Stream to me is very similar, the quality is practically identical and has the nice touch that it tries to decode only the streams necessary, i.e. anything the iPad can play natively (e.g. h264 in mp4, or aac in m4a containers) it just streams without decoding. This keeps your CPU use a bit lower, around 65% on my system. However the interface is not quite as polished and intuitive, some settings are in weird places and the server is not quite that stable (at least on windows).
The most important thing though is that it also streams music and pictures. This is great if you have no other apps that do that but for pictures, its not really that great because it takes a while to stream each picture so your user experience is slow and awkward.
There are better ways to make your picture library available online and much faster server apps if you just want to grab if from your PC.
For music its nice but again, it takes a while to start each song whereas other apps do it instantly.

Zumocast does several things I really don't like, like putting your files on a website which means your privacy is like gone forever and if you're careless you can delete the files on your PC from their website, which is an incredibly idiotic way to write an app. So I will just never use their stuff again, period.

In the end I prefer to have one app for each thing though I do miss the simplicity of Windows Media Player which keeps everything in one library and instantly streams all of it. If only there was a version for the ipad...

Pick air video for video, check out Spotify for streaming audio and any online picture library for your pics.

 

[Hasty]

I only use Zumocast over wifi and prefer the one app does all. While I had both installed I didn't notice any obvious difference between it and AirVideo in use and I like the quick access to docs, music and pics. Just very convenient.

I didn't know it uses cloud storage, which I would doubt given the gigs of stuff I have, but you can easily limit the directories to which it has access. Just keep important stuff locked away.

 

[gentlefury]

Don't forget plex!

 

[Hasty]

Yeah plex is sweet running on the mini and I hadn't noticed they have an app out for it until today.

So many apps , so little time......

 

[iVan]

AirVideo does video streaming.
StreamToMe does video and music streaming.
ZumoCast does both plus pictures and can download to your iPad, but you can only use the material on the app itself.

 

[johnnytucats]

Air Video looks best to me over local wifi when setting the Allowed Bitrates to the highest setting in Global Settings in the app. Quite a bit better than the others, in fact.

 

[dkazaz]

Air Video looks best to me over local wifi when setting the Allowed Bitrates to the highest setting in Global Settings in the app. Quite a bit better than the others, in fact.

Correct - I didn't realize that before but I tested it and it does give better quality. In fact it allows bitrates up to 2.5Mbs, which is higher than he others and it does give noticeably better quality (talking about HD only of course).

What's more, it gives you an option to just "play" mp4 files instead of "play with live conversion" (i.e. transcoding). In play mode your computer's CPU use is very low (~10% vs 95% with transcoding).
None of the others do this correctly, I tested "stream to me" with the same files and selected "play original streams if possible" option but it still transcoded mp4 files and heated up my CPU to near meltdown levels.

Air Video is the one!

 

[Mart1001]

The bitrates in air video is even higher in the latest beta.
It's takes a lot of horsepower, but it's running smooth on my pc.
The air video server software takes 350kB ram and ffmpeg for live conversion 120kB here. CPU is sometimes spiking to 80% but not more.
I play a lot 1080p .m2ts movies on my iPad ripped from bd's and love this app.

Air Video Server 2.4.5-beta5 released

I'm pleased to announce that new Air Video Server version is available.

Changes since last stable release
- Better performance on multi-core machines
- Significantly faster buffering and seeking times (for best performance make sure only one bitrate is selected on client)
- WTV format support (preliminary, might not work with all files)
- Support for AirPlay and high quality 5120kbit/s bitrate (requires client update, currently pending approval)

 

[soundsgoodtome]

Zumocast does several things I really don't like, like putting your files on a website which means your privacy is like gone forever and if you're careless you can delete the files on your PC from their website, which is an incredibly idiotic way to write an app. So I will just never use their stuff again, period.

i realize i'm several months late to this thread, but clearly you've confused zumocast with zumodrive.

zumocast doesn't put anything on a "web site" (presumably you meant a server). it merely streams data to one's iOS device.

zumodrive enables a user to store data "in the cloud" (i.e. on the developer's servers), but that's a separate service -- and is irrelevant to this thread.

the two "zumo" products are explained here: ZumoDrive Vs. ZumoCast - ZumoDrive Blog

i'm not affiliated with the company. i happened upon this thread while looking for something else.

 

[couchpotato]

I have been using AirVideo for little over a year till I found some of my Dilbert episodes were not playing. So I started looking for other apps. After using ZumoCast, VLC streamer and a bunch of other free apps for a while, I have kept QuiKast as my player of choice. It gives you a timeline based thumbnail preview of the movie - so it's easy to seek and move around. Also, QuiKast puts less load on my 3 yr old pc than airvideo.